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Slje Uoijlen iLccturcs, 1881 


A WISE DISCRIMINATION 


The Church’s Need 



THOMAS UNDERWOOD DUDLEY, D.D. 

ASSISTANT-BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF KENTUCKY 


Delivered in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Phila¬ 
delphia, IN February, 1881 




NEW YOR 
THOMAS WHITTA 

2 AND 3 Bible House 

THE qp 18S1 

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ilPf? 1 11958 


'•JOPY 


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Copyright 

i88i 

By Thomas Whittaker 


The John Bohlen Lectureship. 


John Bohlen, who died in this city on the 26th day 
of April, 1874, bequeathed to trustees a fund of One 
Hundred Thousand Dollars, to be distributed to religious 
and charitable objects in accordance with the well-known 
wishes of the testator. 

By a deed of trust, executed June 2, 1875, the trustees, 
under the will of Mr. Bohlen, transferred and paid over 
to “The Rector, Church Wardens, and Vestrymen of the 
Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia,” in trust, a sum 
of money for certain designated purposes, out of which 
fund the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars was set apart for 
the endowment of The John Bohlen Lectureship, 
upon the following terms and conditions: 

“The money shall be invested in good substantial and 
safe securities, and held in trust for a fund to be called 
The John Bohlen Lectureship, and the income shall be 
applied annually to* the payment of a qualified person, 
whether clergyman or layman, for the delivery and pub¬ 
lication of at least one hundred copies of two or more 
lecture sermons. These lectures shall be delivered at 
such time and place, in the city of Philadelphia, as the 



persons nominated to appoint the lecturer shall from 
time to time determine, giving at least six months’ notice 
to the person appointed to deliver the same, when the 
same may conveniently be done, and in no case selecting 
the same person as lecturer a second time within a pe¬ 
riod of five years. The payment shall be made to said 
lecturer, after the lectures have been printed and received 
by the trustees, of all the income for the year derived 
from said fund, after defraying the expense of printing 
the lectures and the other incidental expenses attending 
the same. 

“The subject of such lectures shall be such as is within 
the terms set forth in the will of the Rev. John Bampton, 
for the delivery of what are known as the ‘ Bampton 
Lectures,’ at Oxford, or any other subject distinctively 
connected with or relating to the Christian Religion. 

“ The lecturer shall be appointed annually in the month 
of May, or as soon thereafter as can conveniently be 
done, by the persons who for the time being shall hold 
the offices of Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
of the Diocese in which is the Church of the Holy Trinity; 
the Rector of said Church; the Professor of Biblical Learn¬ 
ing, the Professor of Systematic Divinity, and the Pro¬ 
fessor of Ecclesiastical History, in the Divinity School of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. 

; “In case either of said offices are vacant, the others 
may nominate the lecturer.” 

Under this trust the Right Reverend Thomas Under¬ 
wood Dudley, D.D., Assistant Bishop of the Diocese 
of Kentucky, was appointed to deliver the lectures for 
the year i88i. . 

Philadelphia, Septuagestma, i88i. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

Discrimination as to Dogma,.g 

LECTURE II. 

Discrimination as to Evidences.65 

LECTURE III. 

Discrimination as to Ritual,.125 

LECTURE IV. 

Discrimination as to Recreation and Amusement, . . . igi 









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LECTURE I. 


Discrimination as to Dogma. 







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4 


LECTURE 1 . 


DISCRIMINATION AS TO DOGMA. 

“ if thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord 
Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised 
Him from the dead, thou shah be saved.” —Romans io : 9. 

T AM asked to deliver a course of lectures 
designed to “ confirm and establish the 
Christian Faith.” May 1 be pardoned that I 
add, I feel myself to be summoned by the 
voice of him who years ago welcomed me, a 
stranger, a novice, a beggar for help to preach 
this same faith in a war-desolated region, and 
sent me on my way rejoicing in the gift he had 
bestowed, as in the hearty God-speed he had 
spoken ? I come that by my voice he, being- 
dead, may yet speak. I pray that the true light 
in which he now stands may illumine my mind, 
that I may know what things I ought to speak, 
and that the grace of Him to Whom he is gone 
may make me bold that, in plain, unmistakable 
words, 1 may testify that I have learned. 


lO 


Discrimination 


As I begin to write there rises straightway 
the thought of the contrast between the teach¬ 
ing of the men who were “eye-witnesses and 
ministers of the Word,” and of those who now 
for a thousand years past have sat in their 
seats as “ leaders and commanders to the 
people.” 

Among the documents of the faith, the writ¬ 
ten memorials of the things to be believed, I 
lay my hand upon that “ triumphant paean”* 
of orthodoxy which the mighty name of the 
conqueror at Nicaea protected from the anath¬ 
ema of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalce- 
don. It is nearly two hundred years since 
scholars abandoned the hypothesis that this 
Symbol could lay claim to the name of the 
“ Father of Orthodoxy” ; and yet to-day its 
metaphysical subtleties, its abstruse definitions 
are to a multitude the normal expression of 
the true catholic faith ; and until now in our 
mother Church of England the thunder tones 
of its “everlasting no,” its proclamation of 

* Dean Stanley, quoted by Schaff, “ History of Creeds,” 
vol. i. p. 35, 



as to Dogma. 


11 


despair, still reverberate with discordant roar 
through the “ long-drawn aisles” where sounds 
the pealing anthem of hope. And alas ! even 
in our day and in our own household is heard 
the suggestion that we shall seek to bind the 
limbs of our countrymen with these cords of 
dogma ; that we too shall pronounce anathema 
against misbelief, and give assurance of salva¬ 
tion to correctness of opinion. 

“The catholic faith is this”: the Pseudo- 
Athanasius cries—even a logical definition: of 
the nature of the infinite and incomprehensible 
Godhead—” which faith except every one do 
keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he 
shall perish everlastingly.” Ah ! how like a 
breeze of pure air from far-away mountains 
comes to the spirit, fast bound and imprisoned 
within these walls of scholastic speculative 
dogmatism, this writing which Phoebe the 
widow has brought from the tent-maker at 
Corinth to the handful of Christians at Rome ! 
Therein he has written words hard to be under¬ 
stood ; yes, therein he attains to such height 
of argument as uninspired intellect can never 



Discrim ination 


reach. He looks with open eyes through the 
blue veil which hides the Omnipotent ; he is 
caught up into “ the third heaven” to behold 
things which cannot be uttered in human lan¬ 
guage. Thus instructed he writes for all the 
men of all time, ” the revelation of the mystery 
which was kept secret since the world began, 
but now is made manifest.” But, mark you, 
there is no judgment of exclusion from the hope 
of heaven pronounced against all who cannot 
accept even these apostolic definitions, “whole 
and undefiled” ; and the very climax and con¬ 
clusion of the whole system is the words I have 
read as the motto of our lecture. St. Paul, too, 
says: “Whosoever will be saved, before all 
things it is necessary that he hold the catholic 
faith” ...” and the catholic faith is this” : 
“ if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord 
Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God 
hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be 
saved.” 

Again, I take my place among that motley 
multitude which crowds Jerusalem at the Pen¬ 
tecost, and listen to the first Christian ser- 



as to Dogma. 


n 


mon which the world ever heard. Simon Peter 
is the preacher, the man who once leaped into 
the sea to come to his Master ; who afterward 
turned coward at the question of a little servant- 
girl in the palace of the high priest, and denied 
that Master, as He had foretold. But he is 
the man to whom was given the personal and 
peculiar warrant of apostolic power ; to whom 
was sent the special message from the opened 
sepulchre ; and he is the man into whose heart 
thrice went the probing question, “ Lovest 
thou Me ?” Always first named in the chosen 
company of witnesses, he first makes proclama¬ 
tion of the message, he first opens the door of 
the kingdom, to both Jew and Gentile. Does 
he not know what is the Gospel he is sent to 
preach? Hear him : He Justifies the extraor¬ 
dinary multiform utterances of his fellows on 
the ground that the prediction of Joel is ful¬ 
filled and the Spirit is outpoured in visions to 
the young, and dreams to the old, and in 
prophecies to their sons and daughters ; these 
wonders and signs in heaven and earth do 
herald the day of the Lord, on Whom whoso- 



H 


Discrim ination 


ever should call should be saved. Then mark 
what follows : “Ye men of Israel, hear these 
words : Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of 
God among you by miracles and wonders and 
signs, which God did by Him in the midst of 
you, as ye yourselves also know ; Him being 
delivered by the determinate counsel and fore¬ 
knowledge of God, ye have taken, and by 
wicked hands have crucified and slain ; Whom 
God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of 
death, because it was not possible that He 
should be holden of it.“* Hebrew prophecy 
is again summoned—for remember he is speak¬ 
ing to the sons of Abraham—to justify expecta¬ 
tion of the resurrection, and the preacher adds : 
“ This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we 
all are witnesses. Therefore being by the 
right hand of God exalted, and having received 
of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, 
He hath shed forth this which ye now see and 
hear. Therefore,” he adds—grand, all-satisfy¬ 
ing, all-demanding conclusion!—“Therefore, 
let all the house of Israel know assuredly that 


* Acts 2. 



as to Dogma, 


5 


God hath made that same Jesus, Whom ye 
have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” 

This is Apostolic preaching, even this : God 
hath raised His Son from the dead, and there¬ 
fore the Holy Ghost, the illuminating, the 
convincing, the enabling Spirit, He is come to 
all who hear this word. Therefore—mark it— 
therefore “repent,” says the preacher; “re¬ 
pent and be baptized, every one of you, in 
the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of 
sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
Ghost.” 

How much did they know of what, in the 
language of our popular theology, is called 
“the plan of salvation”—these men and 
women who crowded the way to the water of 
baptism ? Could not any child of our Sunday- 
schools have puzzled them with questions to 
which he could give accurate reply ? They be¬ 
lieved what ? That Jesus was the Christ ; that 
God the Father had raised His Son from the 
dead ; that the Holy Spirit was given ; and 
believing this they were baptized, into the hope 
and covenant of salvation. 



i6 


Discrimination 


How unlike this to much of the discourse now 
heard from the pulpits of the Christian Church ! 
Polished complexity is come intc the room of 
the rugged simplicity of the beginning ; inge¬ 
nious speculations are offered in place of the 
inexplicable realities ; and the acceptance of a 
system of dogma, the assertion of a stereotyped 
experience, the understanding and approval of 
an Ecclesiastical Order, the renunciation of a 
catalogued series of arbitrarily selected indul¬ 
gences—all these are demanded as the pass¬ 
word at the gate of the pilgrim' pathway, 
though there is written above it in letters large 
and plain : “If thou shalt confess with thy 
mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in 
thine heart, that God hath raised Him from 
the dead, thou shalt be saved.” 

Again, I remember that “ the beloved physi¬ 
cian” writes to Tlreophilus that the occasion 
of the history which he had “ taken in hand ” 
is that he might “ know the certainty of those 
things wherein he had been instructed,” or 
catechised. Of what things had been the 
questions and answers in the assembly, of which 



as to Dogma. 


7 


the youth had been one, when on the first day 
of the week they met where “ the doors were 
shut for fear of the Jews'’ ? The nature of the 
Godhead? He has heard how that Jesus de¬ 
clared that Jehovah, the Lord God, is One^ that 
this God is His own Father, and that He and 
His Father are One. He has heard how Jesus 
said that the Holy Ghost should teach His ser¬ 
vants what they “ ought to say” in the hour 
of danger and of trial, and how He proclaimed 
the awful majesty of that God-Spirit by the 
denial of possible forgiveness of blasphemy 
against Him. And He has heard of the part¬ 
ing commandment to His disciples, that they 
baptize men into the name of Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost. What more ? He has learned 
that the Son of God was manifested to destroy 
the works of the devil, and that by His lifting 
up He would draw all men unto Him that they 
might be saved from the evil in the world. 
Code of morality ? He has heard that the 
Spirit of Jesus is spirit of love to God and man, 
and is the fulfilling of the law ; for it is at once 
all-embracing commandment and all-powerful 



i8 


Discrhn ination 


motive. In a word, he has been taught the 
events of that marvellous life which had been 
born at Bethlehem, and was now gone away to 
the highest heavens ; and that to know Him 
and to confess Him—confess with the mouth 
and receive into the heart—was salvation from 
the evil. Decrees of God ! He had heard of 
them only in their fulfilment. The Father 
loved the world, and gave His only begotten 
Son, “ that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." Sacra¬ 
ments, their nature and efficacy? The very 
word was not yet coined, but he knew that with 
washing of water must there be confession of 
the Lord, and that with bread and wine must 
Memorial be made of that death which is his 
life. 

How simple had been his instruction ! He 
learned the facts of Jesus’ life, the plainest 
promises He had spoken. Now there is the 
very embarrassment of riches in the selection 
of the instruction-book for the catechumen, 
and the learner of the lesson of salvation must 
often begin afar back in the eternity of the 



past, with speculations about the economy of 
the Divine government, and his course extend 
to as minute speculations of that which shall 
be the final outcome of that government’s rule. 
In the midst shall be theories upon theories, of 
inspiration, of incarnation, of atonement, of 
grace ; until our Theophilus, alas ! is bewildered 
by the much learning into practical forgetful¬ 
ness of the Life that was manifested to be the 
Light of men, and of the fact\\\2X He was born, 
and died, and rose again, and that whosoever 
shall confess Him with his mouth, and believe 
in his heart ,—mark youy in his heart —that He 
has brought with Him from the grave a never- 
dying life, shall share that risen life, and in its 
power be saved from sin which is death. 

I believe, men and brethren, that herein is 
one largest part of the hindrance to the 
progress of the religion of Jesus Christ among 
men ; that herein is at least partial explanation 
of the fact that it must be defended from 
assault ; and of the further sadder fact that in 
our day “ the enemy cometh on so fast” that 
the Church beginneth to be afraid, and to speak 



20 


Discrim mat ion 


coward words of unbelief; namely, that by 
Christian teachers so much of mere theological 
opinion is mingled with the essential truth as 
it is in Jesus ; that so much of theory is 
blended with the proclamation of the perhaps 
inexplicable facts it would explain ; that so 
many questions of theology, of morality, and 
even of philosophy and of history, are made to 
appear as part of the Christian religion, and 
upon their settlement one way or another is 
made to depend the correctness, the reality, 
the “ soundness,” as it is called, of our Chris¬ 
tian belief ; nay, that, seemingly but too often, 
Christianity is made to stand or fall with 
them. And so the men who cannot accept our 
philosophy—be it physical, metaphysical, or 
historical—are driven away from the confession 
of the divine fact, and are shut out from the 
home of hope. A great company of them, 
which no man can number, as I think (for how 
can I help so thinking when I listen to the 
words of the Master, and remember the con¬ 
vincing power of the Holy Ghost, and the con¬ 
straining power of the love of Christ ?), do be- 



21 


as to Dogma. 

lieve in the heart that God hath raised Jesus 
from the dead, and in the new hope born of 
that resurrection, and by the grace of His Spirit 
do confess Him, though not with the mouth, 
and do follow Him, while they strive after the 
things that are true, and honest, and just, and 
pure, and lovely, and of good report. But 
they come not into any organized division of 
the Christian host ; they give not the help 
which we so much need, and which it is their 
bounden duty to bestow ; they receive not the 
visible pledge, the covenant seal, their hearts 
cannot but desire ; and the Church is clamor¬ 
ous with the questions, “ Why do not men come 
forward to confess Christ,’’ and “ How shall we 
reach the masses?” Answers multiform are 
spoken in reply. I answer that which I believe, 
that undue development of Christian dogma, 
unwise statement of Christian evidences, un¬ 
warranted demand of belief and practice, are 
perhaps largest factors in the solution of our 
problem. Our systems of doctrine, builded by 
our fathers, the champions of the faith in their 
generation, have become at too many points 



22 


Discrimination 


but obstacles to the approach of our friends 
and countrymen ; for the fast-flowing river of 
unbelief has in its furious course cut out a new 
channel, and left our levees to separate us only 
from the land where dwell our kinsfolk. We 
have forgotten that theological statement must 
always have closest relation to the philosophy 
of the age ; we have forgotten that no logically 
formulated system of dogma, that no marshalled 
array of evidence is of divine origin, and there¬ 
fore of universal and eternal value ; we have 
forgotten what the Laureate sings : 

" Our little systems have their day, 

They have their day and cease to be : 

They are but broken lights of Thee, 

And Thou O Lord art more than they.” 

And therefore a multitude of men, recalcitrant 
against bur inferences, refuse to confess the 
facts from which we will consent that no other 
deduction may come. 

Doubtless the progress of theological de¬ 
velopment was an inevitable result of the re¬ 
ception of the facts of the Gospel by the human 
intellect. The fantastic dreamings of that 



23 


as to Dogma. 


Jewish-Gentile gnosis which St. Paul condemns 
are but the natural consequence of bringing 
together the revelation of the Christ and their 
Oriental theosophy ; and the definitions of the 
false Athanasius, the Westminister Confession, 
the decrees of the Council of Trent, the 
Thirty-nine Articles, are all, it seems to me, 
the no less natural effort to express the tradi¬ 
tional aspect of the eternal realities agreeably 
to the philosophic conception of the day, and 
in the language of the different schools. 

Just as natural, perhaps just as inevitable, 
has been the consequent division of the Chris¬ 
tian Church into schools of thought, and then 

m 

its disruption into rival sects. I shall not call 
the roll of the contending legions which in this 
our own land march all under the same banner, 
and yet whose unseemly rivalries and un- 
brotherly dissensions so much disfigure the 
glory of the one Leader, to Whom all alike 
have sworn the soldier’s oath of allegiance. 
The divisions at Corinth, which the name of 
the greatest of all Apostles was employed to 
foster, have but repeated themselves until now, 



24 


Discr im ination 


when, alas ! all the passages of the Jordan 
which separates the world from the Church, 
which flows as protection about the city of our 
refuge, are guarded by men of Gilead, each 
company demanding a peculiar “ shibboleth,” 
so that the most valiant defender may cross the 
stream and enter the city at none other pas¬ 
sage than that which he guards ; and the way¬ 
farer, confused by the multiform demand, will 
contentedly dwell without. And yet, men and 
brethren, is it not true, absolutely, incontro- 
vertibly true, that the ground of hope is with 
each and all the same ? Is it not true that, 
from the self-styled infallible vicar of God upon 
earth to the most illiterate and most bigoted 
partisan of ultra Protestantism, each and all 
believe ” that if thou shalt confess with thy 
mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in 
thine heart that God hath raised Him from the 
dead, thou shalt be saved ?” 

We Christians are separated into almost hos¬ 
tile bands ; and those without, who believe as 
we believe, and are being saved from sin as we 
are, by the might of the Spirit of Jesus, yet 



as to Dogma. 


25 


have not put on the badge—why ? Because the 
leaders, in their very eagerness to make it more 
plainly visible, in their honest desire to protect 
it from disgrace, and to make it more efficient 
protection to him who shall wear it, have add¬ 
ed new features which the recruit cannot find 
in “ the pattern shown in the mount/’ Yes, 
my brethren, I believe that the evil of our 
Christian age, the burden under which the re¬ 
ligion of Jesus Christ is being wearied that its 
mighty strength cannot be displayed, is the 
erecting of mere theological opinions and theo¬ 
ries into articles of the faith ; the making tests 
of communion with the Church on earth other 
than the one simple, all-embracing test of the 
Apostle, the loyal acceptance of Jesus Christ, 
the risen Saviour, as the very hidden man of 
the heart, that animated, enabled, restrained, 
directed, controlled by His Spirit, the life we 
live therefore may be His life ; and the honest 
confession of this acceptance publicly as He 
appointed. 

Therefore I am come to speak to you of 
Discrimination as the crying need of the 



26 


Discrmtination 


Church to-day ; Discrimination as to Dogma, 
that we preach according to the analogy of the 
faith ; that we preach only Jesus and the 
resurrection as the essential revelation, the 
Gospel of good tidings ; that we preach plain¬ 
ly the Apostles’ Creed as the statement of 
facts to be received (for I thank God from my 
heart that only this is demanded by the vener¬ 
able Church whose commission we bear) ; that 
we preach Him, and not any theories about 
Him ; Him the only begotten Son of the 
Father ; Him the Revealer of that Father as 
the Father of all men ; Him the Mediator, 
Redeemer, Sanctifier, Whose Spirit shall be 
ours if we believe in our heart and confess 
with our mouth, shall be ours to teach us 
what we ought to do, and to enable the per¬ 
formance. 

But I would not be misunderstood to speak 
disrespectfully or slightingly of the great body of 
other doctrines, important, interesting, help¬ 
ful to many, which are connected in one way 
or another with the religion of Jesus. Surely 
there are heights of holy knowledge to be 



27 


as to Dogiira. 


scaled, there are depths of revealed truth to be 
fathomed. Light is thrown back upon the 
eternal past, and we may please ourselves with 
guesses about the Divine working ; light is cast 
forward upon the.uncertain future, and we may 
speculate on our knees Avhat the end shall be. 
Yes, the disciple of this risen Master will be 
ever learning, that he may come to the full 
knowledge of the truth at last. The words of 
the Christ Himself, the words of His Apostles 
who spake in His Name and by His Spirit, 
afford material for thoughtful, prayerful study, 
are the wells of salvation from which we must 
draw the living water to refresh our thirsty 
spirits ; but to the man who asks now as afore¬ 
time, What must I do that I may be saved ?— 
saved here if there be no heaven nor hell be¬ 
yond—the answer is to be now as then : not 
any inquisitorial search to find out what have 
been the dealings of the Spirit with his spirit, 
not any setting forth of theory as to the nature 
of atonement, not any forensic metaphors of 
imputation of guilt and of righteousness, nor 
mercantile simile of bargain and payment ; nay, 



28 


Discriminatioji 


these are but theories, efforts to explain the in¬ 
explicable ; but I will tell him who Jesus was, 
and what He was : His life, His death, His 
resurrection ; and then, “ If thou shalt confess 
with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in 
thine heart that God hath raised Him from the 
dead, thou shalt be saved.” 

Secondly, I wish to speak of the need for 
discrimination in the method we shall adopt in 
presenting the evidences of Christianity to un¬ 
belief. 

Thirdly, I would make application of this 
same principle to our differences of opinion 
touching ritual or worship—the mode of ex¬ 
pressing our devotion to Him in Whom we have 
believed, and Whom we have confessed. 

And fourthly, I would ask for discrimination 
in the judgment of Christian people concerning 
questions relating to recreation and amuse¬ 
ment ; questions as to whose decision I believe 
that we are now standing on ground that is 
wholly untenable. 

And in beginning to speak in this first Lec¬ 
ture of the necessity for discrimination in the 



as to Dogma. 


29 


presentation of dogmatic truth, I would make 
plain, if possible, that I am not quarrelling with 
Creeds and Confessions of faith,^ nor yet with 
Catechisms and Articles of Religion. I recog¬ 
nize fully the authority of the Church to fash¬ 
ion such caskets to enshrine the precious de¬ 
posit ; I recognize not only the right to form, 
but also the necessity for, such tests of even 
the religious opinions of those whom she will 
send forth to teach and to premonish her chil¬ 
dren, to warn and persuade men that they 
neglect not the great salvation. I further rec¬ 
ognize their value as lights shining in a dark 
place, and so helping the unlearned to under¬ 
stand the meaning of those Scriptures by 
which they may be “most surely proven.” 
But if the casket shall be offered as the jewel 
itself ; or if some earnest, honest inquirer can¬ 
not find his way to its opening ; if to some 
mind the interpretation of Catechism or Article 
be a darkening of the truth as he has learned 
it, shall he be denied the privilege of the 
baptismal sign or of the Master’s feast ? 

As I said a little while ago, my brethren, I 



30 


Discrim ination 


thank God that we have inherited, as part of 
the wisdom of the ages, our Office for the Ad¬ 
ministration of Baptism, which demands as pre¬ 
requisite only the acceptance of the Apostles’ 
Creed, with renunciation of Christ’s enemies, 
and the promise of obedience to His will. 
And these last are but the essential manifesta¬ 
tion of the welcome of Him to the heart, as 
the supreme authority of the life. This is the 
wisdom of the ancient historic Church ; but 
is her wise moderation in all cases suffered to 
be sufficient by those who minister in her 
name? The inquiry cannot be profitless, and 
as profitable it may be to consider the wider 
departure from this Apostolic and Scriptural 
standard of required belief, on the part of 
those who have left the old paths to follow 
some deviser of new speculative system, the 
propounder of new theory, who must in the 
very nature of the case demand acceptance of 
the system or the theory as condition for en¬ 
rollment in the new Communion. 

The Apostle, as it seems to me, proclaims 
concisely and yet clearly, in this motto-text I 



as to Dogma. 


’.I 


have read, the fundamental doctrines of the 
Christian religion, any one of which being 
taken away the religion could have no reality. 
And these are—first, that there is a something 
from which mankind, all mankind, needs to be 
saved ; 

Secondly, that a Saviour, the Lord Jesus, 
has come, and has accomplished that deliver¬ 
ance ; and, 

Thirdly, that there is a means, even the faith 
of the heart and the confession of the mouth, 
by which each and every man born of a 
woman may secure for himself the help of that 
Saviour, and the consequent salvation from 
that which oppresses and makes afraid. 

Now let us inquire briefly what has been the 
treatment of these three fundamental doctrines 
in their presentation by Christian teachers to 
the children of men. I answer, first of all, 
that with reference to each of the three there 
has been analysis, exposition, explanation, in 
the shape of pulpit exhortation, of ecclesiastical 
practice, and, alas ! of dogmatic denunciation, 
all alike unwarranted b}^ the Holy Scripture. 



32 


Discrimination 


Do not misunderstand me, again I must 
ask, that I am in any sense an opponent of 
theological science and study. The formula¬ 
tion of a systematic science of Christian theol¬ 
ogy is a duty, even a necessity of the Chris¬ 
tian Church and of Christian scholarship. Its 
inductions from the phenomena of Revela¬ 
tion, its deductions from premises thus found, 
are alike interesting and profitable ; but I do 
plead that theological conclusions may, nay, 
imcst be, kept separate and distinct from the 
essential facts of Christianity, about which 
they are formed, lest they prove in the time 
to come, as they have proved in the time past, 
and are now, hindrances rather than helps to 
the advancement of the kingdom of Christ 
among men. 

Sin is a fact—hard, stubborn, positive fact— 
clearly visible to every rational beholder within 
and without himself. Here, there is no possible 
conflict between Reason and Revelation. The 
long watches by day and by night of the scien¬ 
tist, who calls himself nature's servant, do but 
teach him that which the Holy Spiiit revealed 



as to Dogma. 


33 


to the mind of the Apostle, that “ the whole 
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain togeth¬ 
er until now.”* Tares are ever found among 
the wheat, and the good seed springing up is 
choked by the thorns. On earth, in air, and 
sea, the weaker is the prey of the stronger, and 
the fittest which survives is only the fittest to 
destroy. The lion will tear the lamb who 
would lie down by his side, and the little child 
who should lead them. More than this : even 
in a world grown old under the constant teach¬ 
ing of the Christian Church, the works of the 
flesh, those shameless enormities we may not 
name, which the Apostle catalogues for the 
Galatians, are still manifest ; and if so be that 
through the influence of Christian civilization, 
which is, you know, a direct product of the 
religion of Jesus, we have escaped these open 
violations of the laws of common decency, yet 
in ourselves we behold an ever-active principle 
developing itself into wrath, malice, and false¬ 
hood, if so be that we have learned to prevent 
its utterance of blasphemy and foulness. Yes, 


* Romans 8 : 22. 



34 


Discrimination 


there can be no controversy here—sin is a fact. 
More than this : the universal consciousness of 
mankind bears witness to man’s inability to 
master this enemy who has gained, how we 
know not, possession of the very citadel of his 
life. Pagan poet and Christian philosopher 
alike is spokesman of the race when each de¬ 
clares, “ The good that I would I do not, but 
the evil which I would not, that I do” and 
it is the voice of nature, human nature, aroused 
by the Holy Spirit from its sleep, to the recog¬ 
nition that this body to which it is chained is 
dead, which cries out in St. Paul : ” Wretched 
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death ?”f because the spirit’s in¬ 
herent powers are seen to be insufficient for 
the task. Therefore clearly we may hold and 
must teach that a belief in the reality of sin is 
a necessary element of the belief in Jesus 
Christ as the Deliverer from sin ; that convic¬ 
tion of sin must precede and be a reason for 
the conviction of righteousness, of that justifi¬ 
cation of the sinner which the Father hath pro- 
* Romans 7 : 19. f Romans 7 : 22. 



as to Dogma, 


35 


vided, and of that judgment by which the 
Prince of this world shall be condemned. 

It will follow, too, doubtless, that in propor¬ 
tion to the intensity of the consciousness of 
our guilt will be the eagerness of our joy when 
we have learned that God has put away our 
sin, and the capacity of our love for Him who 
has so loved us. But what may I demand on 
, this point, of those who come saying with the 
Greeks in the old time, “ Sir, we would see 
Jesus, we have heard of the marvellous 
beauty of His Being, we have seen the renew¬ 
ing, regenerating work of His grace ; we would 
join ourselves to His company and be called 
by His name” May I demand that these 
shall accept my theory of the necessary char¬ 
acter and exhibition of what I call conviction 
of sin ? Shall I hold up before them the pic¬ 
ture of the blinded persecutor on the Damas¬ 
cus road, fallen prostrate to the earth, over¬ 
whelmed by the vision of the light of God's 
holiness, hearing no sound save the dreadful 
voice of demand, personal and direct, ” Why 
persecutest thou Me ?” and insist that this is 



36 


Discriin ination 


the normal expression of the dealing of God 
with man, in the day when He looks upon him 
to take away his reproach and his despair ; 
whereas the same Scripture record tells of other 
men, Apostles and Martyrs as well, who fol¬ 
lowed the Christ under the compulsion of the 
beauty and glory which were manifested in 
Him, and only after long years of companion¬ 
ship came to know what great things must be 
done, and what great things He had done, for 
their souls ? 

“ Repentance,” the Church teaches her chil¬ 
dren required of persons to be baptized, is 
that ” whereby they forsake sin.” Ah ! yes, 
forsake sin, renounce it in its every recognized 
form, and all the agents inciting to its perform¬ 
ance, and all the means by which they secure 
our compliance : this the necessary result of 
the belief with the heart in this risen Christ. 
’Tis the very first outgoing of the newly-planted 
life ; but this one test complied with, who shall 
dare demand that other be offered ? And yet 
is it not lamentably true that false theory on 
this point set forth as scriptural truth has been 





as to Dogma. 


3; 


a fruitful source of evil, that a multitude of men 
honest and true have been kept away from the 
confession of the Master because they could 
not proclaim as theirs this experience, it may 
be real, to their teachers ? They might not 
enter the city, because their approach had not 
been along that road which the watchman and 
guide declares to be the only way of access. 

Straightway when we speak of this particular 
departure from the catholic freedom of the re¬ 
ligion of Jesus, we think of its furthest devel¬ 
opment in the mad doings of the followers of 
a good and great man : the anxious-bench ; 
the multitude stirred into frenzy by the clam¬ 
orous appeals of the preacher, which he makes 
to men and to God with equal fervency and 
equal familiarity ; the singing by a great con¬ 
gregation of simple melodies with words of 
sweetest simplicity and tenderness ; and as nat¬ 
ural consequence the physical excitement bred 
as by contagion. These things we have seen, 
and, alas ! have seen the professed convert 
wake up the next day to consciousness of the 
unreality of the whole transaction, to recogni- 



38 


Discrimination 


tion of the fact that in purpose he had not for¬ 
saken sin and turned to God, and to an after 
lifetime of unbelief in the divine origin of the 
Christian religion. I believe these ranting 
follies ip the name of Jesus have done more to 
damage His cause than all the utterances of 
that scientific scepticism whose attacks seem 
to be the only danger that our champions now 
dread. 

But are we, the inheritors of that “ form of 
spund words” which protests by its prescribed 
requirements against such disordered excess 
being the regular and proper result of the 
working of that Spirit, who “ is not the author 
of confusion but of peace”—are we without 
blame in this matter ? Do not individual 
ministers of this Church unwarrantably set up a 
standard of requirement on this subject which 
the Church has not erected 7 ” Repentance,” 

remember, is that “whereby we forsake sin” ; 
that only this Church declares. Remember, 
further, the instances of repentance recorded 
for our learning in Holy Scripture are just as 
varied in their incidental characteristics as are 



as to Dogma. 


39 


the temperaments of those in whom this spirit¬ 
ual process goes on. David the royal Psalmist 
rent his clothes and lay all night upon the 
earth when convinced of his sin by the mouth 
of the Prophet ; Simon Peter went out from 
the presence of the Master Whom he had de¬ 
nied, and wept bitterly ; the Publican in our 
Lord’s parable “ sighed and smote upon his 
breast” ; Zaccheus did neither weep nor sigh ; 
and the penitence of each and all is declared 
equally acceptable to God. Repentance is that 
whereby we forsake sin ; yes, all sm which the 
Holy Ghost shall convince us to be sin ; and 
except it bear thia fruit, surely our faith in the 
Lord Jesus is vain ; but let us take good heed 
that we who have found peace in believing 
despise not the experience unlike our own, and 
so quench the spark of life which may be kin¬ 
dling in the heart. 

One word more on this point. May I demand 
of him who cometh to confess Jesus Christ that 
he believe in the eternity of sin, and so in the 
never-ending duration of its punishment ? 

It need hardly be said that I am not here to 



40 


Discrimmation 


I 


express my assent to, or my denial of, any one 
of the theories upon this subject which have 
made so large a part of theological controversy 
in our own time. It matters not whether the 
speaker or whether any other divine agree in 
opinion —mark you, in opinion —with the gifted 
rhetorician of the Abbey who sets forth in such 
beautiful words an eternal hope for all our race 
because of a continued probation in the unseen 
world ; or whether he follow the venerable and 
learned Oxford Professor, and find equal com¬ 
fort and hope in the thought that we cannot 
know what souls do not die in a state of grace, 
and “ that the merits of Jesus reach to every 
one who wills to be saved, whether in this life 
they knew Him or knew Him not.”* 

It matters not whether any individual 
Churchman may hold the opinion of the elder 
Calvinists and of their modern interpreters, 
who even in popular discourse can say, 
” When the damned jingle the burning irons 
of their torment they shall say, ‘ For ever ! ’ 

* Pusey’s “ What is of Faith as to Eternal Punish 
ment?” p. 14, 



as to Dogma. 


41 


i when they howl, echo cries, ‘ Forever ! ’ or 
whether he accept the hypothesis of “condi¬ 
tional immortality,” as clearly and ably set 
forth by one of our own most distinguished 
men, that the “ everlasting punishment” of 
the wicked is the taking away of an endless 
life. I say it matters not : I mean, of course, 
that his opinion upon this confessedly mysteri¬ 
ous subject can properly make no difference in 
his proclamation of the Gospel message, and 
certainly it can make no difference in the pass¬ 
word he may require at the door of the king¬ 
dom ; for it seems to me that perhaps that 
theory containing most of appeal to the fear of 
physical suffering offers least deterrent influ¬ 
ence against the commission of sin. 

No topic of human thought can be fraught 
with higher interest than this : What shall be 
the condition of men in that world to which 
we depart through “ the grave and gate of 
death”? Men will think about it, and must 
speak about it to those whom they are sent to 
teach ; but let us remember ever to speak our 
* Spurgeon, quoted by Farrar, “ Eternal Hope,” p. i. 



42 


Discrim mat ion 


opinions as opinionsy and not as dogma resting 
upon Church authority or plain scriptural dec¬ 
laration. 

“ The Church,” it has been beautifully said, 
” has its long list of saints ; it has not inserted 
one in any catalogue of the damned.”* 

As truly it may be said, the Church requires of 
all who would enter its communion, the con¬ 
fession of belief in the life everlasting but 
nowhere has it asked for like belief in the never- 
ending death. 

Sin is a fact ; the punishment of sin is a cer¬ 
tainty now and here, and must be there if un¬ 
forgiven and unremoved ; but what emotional 
evidence shall alone attest our conviction of 
sin, what details of renunciation other than 
those plainly set down in Scripture shall alone 
declare our forsaking of sin, what shall be its 
punishment in character and duration—^^these 
are theories, opinions, important it may be, 
and interesting, but they are not essential part 
of Christianity, and cannot ” be required of any. 

* Quoted by Pusey, “ What is of Faith as to Everlasting 
Punishment ?” p. 14. 



as to Dogma. 


43 


man that it should be believed as an article of 
the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary 
to salvation.” 

Secondly, the Apostle declares that this de¬ 
liverance is to be effected by belief, but a be¬ 
lief of the heart as well as of the head, and by 
the confessed acceptance of a Person and not 
of a doctrine. This crucified Jesus Whom he 
preached everywhere, as declared to be God’s 
Son with power by the resurrection from the 
dead; Whom his colleague Simon Peter pro¬ 
claimed unto the house of Israel as made by 
Jehovah both Lord and Christ; Who in the 
presence of chosen witnesses had ascended into 
heaven ; He it is, the Apostle writes. Who 
saves ; and he adds that this work is accom¬ 
plished by the making His life which He 
brought back from the grave to become our 
life by believing in the heart in the reality of 
this risen life. 

So far, as it seems to me, all is simple and 
easy of comprehension, however it may be diffi¬ 
cult to receive upon any evidence the fact that 
He rose from the dead. But we would know, 



44 


Discrimination 


naturally we would know all the history of that 
wondrous Life, and we eagerly seek the com¬ 
panionship of the men who did hear His words 
and see His works, who did eat and drink with 
Him after His earthly life was ended. They 
tell us that He was born by miracle, without 
the taint of our nature's curse. They tell us, 
nay. He tells us, in words which are their own 
authentication, because no human imagination 
could have conceived them, that God is His 
own Father, in other and closer relation than 
that He bears to His sons by creation ; that 
He lived by essential existence before that 
Abraham began to be ; that His works are the 
works of His Father, and as little subject to the 
limitations of Moses' law ; that He Himself 
gives eternal life to them that hear His voice 
and follow Him ; that He Himself will send the 
Comforter from the Father; nay, finally, that 
He and His Father, that Eternal God, are One; 
and the response in some cases comes back 
from the angry auditors in the stones wherewith 
they would kill Him, “ because," as they said, 
•" that Thou being a man makest Thyself God." 



as to Dogma. 


45 


More than this : because He ever speaketh of 
the Comforter Whom He will send as a Person, 
and because to Him are ascribed attributes of 
Deity ; and because, finally, when the hour of 
His departure is at hand, we hear Him speak 
the parting charge to the Apostles whom He had 
chosen, that they go and preach His Gospel to 
all the nations, and that they baptize men into 
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost; therefore of necessity we believe what 
He hath plainly spoken, that Jesus is God, and 
that there are three Persons in one God—the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Yes, we 
believe it, this whereof we can form no con¬ 
ception, the nature of God, because He Whom 
we have welcomed to our heart reveals it. 

Whatsoever He hath revealed, plainly re¬ 
vealed, either by His words or His life, or by 
His Spirit to be spoken by the witnesses whom 
He sent to found and to govern His Church, 
that we will receive without question, that we 
must demand that all receive ; for otherwise 
vain is the claim to believe in the heart that 
God hath raised Him from the dead. But we 




46 


Discrirn ination 


are not bound to believe any theories to ex¬ 
plain His redemption, fashioned by ingenious 
inferences from the sacred record ; for with 
reference to almost its every detail varying 
hypotheses have been suggested, equally includ¬ 
ing the observed phenomena. 

To take but one example, and that the 
chiefest : Again and again while He taught in 
Jerusalem and in Galilee He foretold to the 
little company of His immediate followers the 
impending death that He must die. With 
ever-increasing clearness, as the time draweth 
nigh. He makes them understand that He will 
be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, 
and that they will crucify Him, and that on 
the third day He will rise again. More than 
this. Himself did teach that He would draw 
all men unto Himself by being lifted up, and 
in yet plainer words that the Son of Man came 
to “give His life a ransom for many.” The 
Prcphet of the Wilderness, His forerunner and 
herald, had pointed Him out in the very begin¬ 
ning of his public ministry as “ the Lamb of 
God who taketh away the sin of the world” ; 



as to Dogma. 


47 


and His apostles to whom is left the witnessing 
to the resurrection, the preaching of the deliv¬ 
erance He had accomplished, they ever empha¬ 
size this death as the procuring cause of salva¬ 
tion. “ God commendeth His love toward us,'’ 
says St. Paul, “ in that, while we were yet sin¬ 
ners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being 
justified by His blood, we shall be saved from 
wrath through Him. For if, when we were 
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the 
death of His Son ; much more, being reconciled, 
we shall be saved by His life. And not only 
so, but we also joy in God through our Lord 
Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received 
the atonement.”* St. John says : ” Herein is 
love, not that we loved God, but that He loved 
us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for 
our sins. ”f St. Peter says : ” For Christ also 
hath once suffered for sin, the just for the un¬ 
just, that He might bring us to God.”:!; Let 
these passages suffice to represent the apostolic 
teaching, teaching which the Church has 

* Romans 5 : 8-11. f i John 4 : 10. 

X I Peter 3 : 18. 



48 


Discrim ination 


echoed in the words which she bids the Priest 
to speak in the holiest and highest act of her 
worship, when she gives all glory to the 
Almighty Father, for that of His tender mercy 
He did give His only Son Jesus Christ to suffer 
death upon the cross for our redemption : 
“ Who made there, by His one oblation of 
Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and suffi¬ 
cient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for 
the sins of the whole world.” 

But has the Church, then, set her seal to 
any theory of the atonement, which you 
and I and all her children must receive as 
part of the precious deposit ? Must I be¬ 
lieve a mode in which Christ hath brought 
me to God, in order to the assurance of the 
adoption, the sonship He offers me ? Am I 
shut up, by explicit scriptural statement, or 
by ecclesiastical dogma resting thereon, to any 
defined metaphysical conception as to how 
Christ made His soul an offering for sin ; as to 
why it was necessary that He be ” crucified, 
dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, 
and to be a sacrifice not only for original guilt, 



as to Dogma. 


49 


but also for actual sins of men”?^ I thank 
God that the utterances of holy men of old, 
who spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost, and that the formulas of the ancient 
historic Church, both doctrinal and devotional, 
are all of such character that, as it seems to 
me, men holding very differing opinions upon 
these points, and men holding consciously and 
definitely no theory at all, may read, mark, and 
inwardly digest them with equal joy and equal 
profit. 

I take my place in reverent, sorrowing 
memory at the foot of that cross on Calvary’s 
hillside ; I stand in fancy among those despair¬ 
ing men who are looking upon the death-agony 
of their dearest Friend ; I am close to the 
weeping mother, whose heart the prophetic 
sword is piercing. .1 hear the mysterious words 
of the sufferer. His tender human commend¬ 
ing of His mother to His friend, His divine 
prayer for those who wounded Him, His God¬ 
like assurance of blessedness to the penitenc 
transgressor by His side. At last there comes 


“Articles of Religion,” Art. 2. 



50 


Discriminatio7i 


the light at eventide, the resigning His spirit 
into His Father’s hands, and then the expiring 
mighty shout of the Victor, “ It is finished !” 
—and He is dead. Just when He willed, with 
perfect control of the event. He is dead. 
What does it mean ? The sun has hidden his 
face that he may not behold the dreadful 
sight ; nature is shuddering, and the rocks are 
rent, and the graves are opened. Is it the 
wings of the crowding angels who are hovering 
about the scene which shut out the sunlight ? 
Is it the mad rage of the Prince of this world 
who beholds his own defeat, that causeth the 
earth his kingdom to tremble and be broken ? 
I turn away with the wondering, fearing multi¬ 
tude, and muse in my heart of that thing which 
is done, and the question keeps repeating itself. 
Ah ! why hath it pleased the Lord to bruise 
Him? 

One man whom I meet tells me that only 
therefore was He born ; that the incarnation 
was necessary only to make possible the sacri¬ 
fice of the body’s blood ; and another that this 
cruel, bloody death is only necessary develop- 



as to Dogma. 


5 


merit, a natural result of the indwelling of God 
in humanity, that thereby may be made to the 
Father the sacrifice of perfect repentance and 
confession. I am told that in a fiction God 
hath imputed to Jesus the guilt of the race, and 
in corresponding fiction will now impute His 
righteousness to His brethren. I am told by 
some that God the Father was angry with His 
children, and that the agony and death of His 
own Son were alone sufficient to appease His 
wrath ; and yet another bids me remember how 
the Son Himself declared that the Father is 
real Father to all, and because He loved them 
sent His Son to redeem them. My very soul 
is weary of their theories. I can find difficul¬ 
ties, yes, difficulties scriptural and natural, in 
all these theories, and none of them is in any 
sense adequate interpretation of what is done, 
and so I turn away to my solitude, believing 
that God hath raised Him from the dead, be¬ 
lieving that His death was surely necessary else 
had it not been suffered ; believing that because 
of His life and death He has gained power to 
give me eternal life ; believing that God is my 



52 


Discrim ination 


Father because He is His Father, as He de¬ 
clared : yes, that though I cannot understand 
the necessity, or the manner of meeting that 
necessity, yet that all is done that a Father’s 
love, a Brother’s suffering, a Spirit’s influence 
can do, that all men everywhere may be saved 
from sin and death unto holiness and life. I 
will believe and I will pray, and I will strive to 
love Him who has so loved me, and to confess 
Him with my mouth and in my life, that so I 
may come at last to see Him, and then shall I 
know all this whereof now men take so much 
counsel which, is yet dark, and darkened, by 
words without knowledge. 

And now, to speak briefly of the third essen¬ 
tial element in the salvation by Christ, enunci¬ 
ated by the Apostle in our text—namely, the 
belief of the heart and the confession of the 
mouth as the means of its attaininent. I beg 
you to note his expression, “ if thou shalt be¬ 
lieve in thine heart,” which must, as it seems 
to me, and as I have already more than once 
suggested, signify the enshrining of the Spirit 
of Jesus within our spirit, that He may be the 



as to Dogma. 


53 


r 


fountain source of our life. May we not say, 
in words even less susceptible of misunder¬ 
standing,. that the faith of the heart that God 
has raised Him from the dead is the surrender 
of our will, which is ourself, our very personal¬ 
ity, and the taking of His will instead, because 
God hath raised Him from the dead ? Now re¬ 
member, the freedom of our will is the very 
essence of our personality, even as it is the 
likeness of God wherein we are created ; that 
will surrendered and the will of another placed 
on the throne of our being, our very personality 
is merged in the being of that conqueror, and 
the life we thereafter live is not our own, but is 
liv’’ed by faith in him. True of any human 
friend or enemy to whom, from love or from 
fear, we thus may yield, ’tis true of the rela¬ 
tion of the saved to the Saviour, and is the 
very means whereby their salvation is effected. 
“ The life which I now live in the flesh," 
writes St. Paul to the Galatians, “ I live by the 
faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave 
Himself for me."* Again and again we read 


* Gal. 2 : 20 . 



54 


Discrimination 


how he writes to Christians that they are “ in 
Jesus Christand he says,* “ As many of you 
as have been baptized into Christ have put on 
Christ” ; and baptism, St. Peter says, is, in 
its essential nature, and hence in its efficient 
power to unite with Christ,f “the answer of 
a good conscience toward God.” 

But necessarily the faith of the heart must in¬ 
clude the faith of the mind, which is its found¬ 
ation and warrant. Because we believe upon 
evidence satisfactory to our understanding that 
God has raised Jesus from the dead, therefore 
under the guidance and by the enabling grace 
of God the Holy Ghost we yield to Him our will, 
and thus joined to Him we are saved by Him. 
Mark well too that this faith of the heart is the 
gift of the Holy Ghost ; for Jesus Himself de¬ 
clared that “no man can come to Me except 
the Father, which hath sent Me draw him.”;}: 
But oh, mark as well how quick He was to add, 
“. . . and they shall be all taught of God. 
Every man, therefore that hath heard, and hath 

I I Peter 3 : 21. 

X John 6 : 44, 45 


* Gal. 3 : 27. 



as to Dogma. 


55 


learned of the Father, cometh unto Me.” The 
faith of the heart, the coming unto Him, is the 
gift of God, but a gift freely offered unto all; 
this is His declaration, so that all are without 
excuse. 

But the fact of Jesus’ resurrection being re¬ 
ceived by the mind as any other great fact of 
history upon sufficient proof, what follows as 
necessary in its progress from the mind to the 
heart, in its conversion from an intellectual 
conviction to a spiritual power? The Holy 
Ghost is to be the Agent to work the wonderful 
transmutation ; therefore let us beware how we 
limit or prescribe the mode of His operation. 
As numerous and varied perhaps as were the 
different methods of our Lord’s working in the 
days of His human life will be those of His 
Paraclete in effecting the new creation of the 
human soul by its self-surrender to the risen 
Christ. To one, the full realization of his son- 
ship, the full purpose of subjection to Christ, 
shall come as slowly and as gradually as came 
the light to the eyes of the blind man at Beth- 
saida, who at the first touch of the Master’s 



56 


Discrimination 


hand saw “ men as trees walking,’' and after its 
repetition “ was restored, and saw every man 
clearly.”* Another, aroused by the Spirit to a 
sense of his uncleanness, of his impotence, his 
curse, shall run as the leper did to fall at Jesus’ 
feet, crying out in an agony of despair, ” Lord, 
Thou wilt. Thou canst make me clean ;”f and 
now as then the answer shall come back, ” I 
will, be thou clean” ; and new hope and pur¬ 
pose and resolve, with strength to resist and to 
endure, shall straightway come again unto him. 
To one the waters of the covenant ordinance 
may bring the comforting assurance and be the 
medium of regenerating grace, even as Siloam’s 
pool was made to be the conduit of blessing to 
him who, bidden,“went and washed and re¬ 
ceived sight”; while to another, groping in the 
darkness of fear and of doubt, convinced of sin 
but not yet convinced of the righteousness of 
God in Christ, some faithful Ananias may be 
sent with message of help, with commission to 
put his hands upon him that he may receive 

* St. Mark 8 : 24, 25. f St. Matt. 8 : 2, 3. 

X St. John 9 : ir. 



as to Dogma. 


57 


sight. For this only I plead, that we lay not 
as burdens upon the souls of men other than 
“ necessary things” ; that we hinder not the 
confession of the mouth by theories of our own 
as to what must be the process of forrrtation of 
the crystal faith. Does the man assert his be¬ 
lief in his heart that God has raised Jesus from 
the dead, and is he come to renounce His ene¬ 
mies and to swear the sacrament of obedient 
following for all the years to come? Then I 
ask not by what path ’ the Holy Ghost has 
brought him to this state of salvation. I pry 
with no sharp-pointed question into the past 
experience, lest I damage and destroy the ten¬ 
der plant whose seed has just sprouted in the 
darkness and silence of its spirit-home. I ask 
not for acceptance of any theories of sin or of 
reconciliation, nor yet for promises of specific 
renunciation or performance. ' There is not 
time or occasion for me to give long instruc¬ 
tion as to modes of ordinances or sacramental 
efificacy. He would confess with his mouth, 
Him in whom he has learned to believe with 
his heart, that he may com.e into the assured 




58 


Discrimination 


state of salvation, and I dare not demand aught 
else. By and by he, too, as member of the Chris¬ 
tian host may, nay, must be, student of the 
ancient writing and of the Church’s teachings ; 
but before he puts on the uniform let us beware 
that we make no unauthorized demand of theo¬ 
logical orthodoxy. I will tell him, if he ask of 
these things, that concerning them there is hon¬ 
est difference of opinion among Christian men ; 
will tell him that his opinion is as free and un¬ 
constrained as theirs ; above all will tell him 
that to know Jesus and not doctrine about 
Jesus, that the having Him as tenant of the 
heart, and not the having orthodox views about 
Him in the mind, that this is eternal life. 

One word more : How may I know the reality 
of the supposed dealing between Christ and 
my soul? Surely the religion of Jesus must 
afford some test whereby its alleged influences 
may be tried, some seal of authentication of 
the title to salvation it claims to give. Ah ! 
what havoc has been made at this point by the 
contending theories of , the Doctors, and what 
barriers against the entrance of men into the 



as to Dogma. 


59 


Church have been builded of the dead bodies 
of the contestants ! 

Wouldst thou be assured of thy salvation ?— 
go fall on thy knees before the infallible 
teacher, guide, Vicar of Christ. His represent¬ 
ative is in every parish, and for all practical 
purposes each parish Priest is to the penitent 
infallible. Tell him thy faith and thy sin, the 
health thou hopest thou hast, the disease thou 
fearest is lurking in thy soul; he, the Priest, 
the physician of the soul, will give thee medi¬ 
cine if needed, or will guarantee the soundness 
if it be there. Thou shalt depart in peace to 
thine house ; for do not the Priest’s lips keep 
knowledge ? 

At the opposite pole of the ecclesiastical 
sphere I find other theory, standing sentinel, 
armed to completeness, and ready for battle ; 
nor Priest nor word of absolving authority will 
he admit to be possible or helpful. Wouldst 
thou be assured of thy salvation 1 —look in thy 
heart and read the writing of the Spirit, where¬ 
by He will witness with thy spirit. 

I thank God, my brethren, that here as before 



6o 


Discrim mat ion 


the wisdom of the ancient Church is manifested ; 
and oh ye, her ministering servants, be careful 
that in eager pursuit of logical, systematic con¬ 
sistency, ye turn not aside to the right hand nor 
to the left, neither to the bastard Romanism 
of a mock confessional, nor to the partisan 
Protestantism of a pretended miraculous expe¬ 
rience ! Our Church has no theory. The 
minister of Jesus Christ declares with authority 
the covenanted terms of forgiveness, and when 
the confession of a true faith is made with 
seeming honesty he declares. sin forgiven and 
new birth accomplished. This is but the in¬ 
herent necessary function of the official charac¬ 
ter. But still we are not left in doubt and fear 
in such vital matters. The gift of Christ is not 
only salvation from sin, but salvation unto 
righteousness ; not merely deliverance from 
penalty, but from power. Thou wouldst know 
whether in very deed thou hast believed in 
thine heart and confessed with thy mouth 
unto eternal life ; then rise up and walk, in the 
new strength born of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ, in the path that He has ordained. No 



as to Dogma. 


6i 


theory of absolution is needed ; the fact of de¬ 
liverance from sin is proven by the fact of new 
life conferred. Yes, to believe with the heart 
in the risen Christ ; to confess Him, His in¬ 
dwelling Presence and government with mouth 
and life, this is salvation, no matter for ortho¬ 
doxy or heterodoxy of mere religious opinion ; 
no matter for the rudeness or the perfection of 
our liturgic forms ; no matter for conformity 
or disregard of the arbitrary standards of sup¬ 
posed religious conduct. This St. Paul says is 
eternal life ; this Reason says is salvation, for it 
is union with Him who is the Life, Him Who 
hath conquered death and hell, and over Whom 
death hath no more dominion. 




i 


• \ 


LECTURE II. 


Discrimination as to Evidences. 



LECTURE IL 


DISCRIMINATION AS TO EVIDENCES. 

“ How then shall they call on him in whom they have not 
believed ?”— Romans io : 14. 

'\^7E follow the great reasoner in his argu- 
^ ^ ment: “ With the heart man believeth 
unto righteousness, and with the mouth con¬ 
fession is made unto salvation. . . . Who¬ 

soever shall call upon the name of the Lord 
shall be saved” ; but ” how,” he adds, ” then 
shall they call on Him in whom they have not 
believed ?” That is, for what reason, impelled 
by what motive, shall they appeal for deliver¬ 
ance and salvation to one of whose power to 
save they have not been convinced, and to 
whom, therefore, they are not persuaded to 
surrender their will ? The mind must accept 
as true warrant of confidence the evidences of 
His claim to be the Saviour from sin before 
the heart can believe to the attainment of His 


66 


Discrimination 


righteousness and the mouth confess unto 
salvation." Hence the necessity for evidences 
of Christianity ; and because the doubts as 
really as the beliefs of an age will take their 
shape and their expression from the philosophy 
of that age, hence the necessity that the mode 
of stating these evidential arguments shall be 
changed from -time to time ; and we may not be 
surprised if the defence sufficient in one genera¬ 
tion shall not suffice to protect against the new 
assault of its successor. 

You remember the old story told by Canon 
Liddon in his Bampton Lectures, of the scep¬ 
tical prince who asked his Chaplain to give him 
some clear evidence of the truth of Christianity ? 
The king had not much time to spare for such 
matters, and would have the reply contain but 
few words ; and the Chaplain tersely answered, 
“ The Jews, your Majesty." 

Can we make such response to patronizing 
inquirer of to-day, with good hope that the 
witness of the long history of national expecta¬ 
tion, and of the still continued condition of na¬ 
tional isolation and yet of thorough dispersion. 



as to Evidences. 


67 


shall have weight to convince of the claims of the 
Christ ? True, there is record of the existence 
of Messianic hope for thousands of years, and 
of this hope symbolized and reinforced by pro¬ 
phetic declaration and by ritual observance ; 
but our inquirer will object that our predictions 
were spoken after the events, or, like the acts of 
this people’s worship, have been tortured into 
reference to the Christ who should come. Point 
him to the present condition of the “ chosen 
people,” and bid him see how it is as entirely 
separated from the peoples among whom it 
dwells, as when in the day of its glory it dwelt 
in that little narrow tract of country, hedged in 
by mountains and the sea ; bid him note the 
unmistakable, the ineffaceable characteristics of 
countenance, the stain that will not disappear, 
the indelible brand of an ” unexpiated self- 
imprecated guilt he will tell you that it is 
but a notable instance of the ” persistency of 
type” ; and, more than this, that the nation is 
itself beginning to dig down the walls which 
have separated it from those among whom it 
* Liddon’s Bampton Lectures, p. 97. 



68 


Discriininatioji 


sojourns, because no longer “ its heart, its 
home, its future are elsewhere’' ; * because it 
no longer hopes for Him whom we Christians 
have found, and no longer “ witnesses by its 
accumulating despair to the truth of the creed 
which it so doggedly rejects.’’f Prophecy, 
whether of Hebrew seer or of Hebrew national 
life, will not bear the whole burden. 

Shall we then call our inquirer to come see a 
man who must be the Christ, because, as the 
Pharisee confesses, “ no man can do these mir¬ 
acles” which He has done ” except God be 
with Him” ? Shall I bid him come taste the 
new-made wine at the wedding feast at Cana, 
or summon him to help the fishermen drag to 
shore the breaking net into which Divine Power 
has compelled the crowding multitude of fishes ? 
Shall I give him place in the fast-filling ship, 
that he may hear the words of the just-awak¬ 
ened Jesus rebuking the winds and the sea into 
calm ? Or shall he be called to shudder at the 
sight of the demoniacs “ coming out of the 
tombs exceeding fierce,” that he may hear their 
* Liddon’s Bampton Lectures, p. 97. f Ibid. 



as to Evidences. 


69 


words of despair, and then behold them “ cloth¬ 
ed, and in their right mind,” by the mighty 
word of the Deliverer ? Shall I command that 
he make one of the little company who stand 
wondering about the bed where lies the dead 
maiden, and see how her spirit comes again 
at the summons of the Nazarene ; or that he 
tarry with the multitude at the gate of the 
“ city called Nain,” when the prophet stops 
the bier, and gives the dead boy back again, 
alive, to the arms of the widowed mother? 

Our inquirer will answer, it may be, that he 
cannot receive as genuine and authentic record 
of real events these stories of wonders wrought 
by the hands of Him we worship ; or admitting 
most probably, that the record is true in the 
general, he may deny the possibility of such 
reported occurrences, and explain their finding 
place in the story of a good man’s life by the 
natural tendency and desire to paint such halo 
.of glory about the head of a beloved teacher : 
the inevitable confounding of the false with the 
true, the legendary with the historical, in the 
earliest records of a people’s history. 



70 


Discrini ination 


Let us assume that he is an honest sceptic, 
who believes in God, and who. like Dr. Car¬ 
penter, the Coryphaeus of modern theistic 
scepticism, is “ not conscious of any such 
scientific ‘ prepossession ' against miracles as 
would prevent me [him] from accepting them 
as facts if trustworthy evidence of their reality 
could be adduced.” Let us assume that for 
him, as for this scientist, the ” question is 
simply, ‘ Have we any adequate historical 
ground for the belief that such departure [from 
the laws of nature] has ever taken place ’ ” 
Then see what difficulties present themselves in 
the way of his thus being convinced that Jesus is 
the Son of God, as the very initial step in the 
ascent to his belief of the heart unto righteous¬ 
ness, and confession with the^ mouth unto 
salvation. 

The tendency of modern philosophic thought 
is to demand verification as the great test of 
truth, because the whole progress of human 
discovery goes to show that only verified facts 
have ever conducted to valuable knowledge. 

* Row’s Bampton Lectures, p. 29. 



as to Evidences. 


71 


And this tendency, mark you, will show itself 
in the habits of mind, not alone of the student 
and the scientist, but just as plainly in those of 
the artisan and the laborer, because they breathe 
the air of their age, and are necessarily affected 
by the temper and tone of its philosophy. A 
priori considerations have well nigh ceased to 
have any value in the determination of what is 
truth, and the opinion is everywhere, that 
“ facts which can receive no kind of verification, 
either in the realities of the present or in the 
palpable historical events of the past, can only 
be accepted as true on an amount of evidence 
which is practically demonstrative.” * 

* “ Looking at it not only as outright, but as our duty, to 
bring the higher critical enlightenment of the present day to 
bear upon the study of the Gospel records, I ask whether 
both past and contemporary history do not afford such a 
body of evidence of a prevalent tendency to exaggeration 
and distortion, in the representation of actual occurrences 
in which ‘ supernatural ’ agencies are supposed to have 
been concerned, as entitles us, without attempting any de¬ 
tailed analysis, to believe that if we could know what really 
did happen, it would often prove to be something very dif¬ 
ferent from what is narrated.” 

” The scientific theist,” the same writer says, ” who re- 




72 


Discrimination 


How, then, shall we justify to our inquirer 
the claims of our Master to his homage, if those 
claims be made to rest exclusively, or even 
primarily, upon the basis of the physical mira¬ 
cles recorded in the New Testament ? 

It has been well pointed out by Canon Row, 
in his Lectures upon “ Christian Evidences 
viewed in Relation to Modern Thought” (to 
which work I would confess myself most largely 

gards the so-called ‘ laws of nature ’ as nothing else than 
man’s expression of so much of the divine order as lies 
within his power to discern, and who looks at the uninter¬ 
ruptedness of this order as the highest evidence of its origi¬ 
nal perfection, need find (as it seems to me) no abstract diffi¬ 
culty in the conception that the Author of nature can, if He 
will, occasionally depart from it. And hence as I deem it 
presumptuous to deny that there might be occasions which 
in His wisdom may require such departure, I am not con¬ 
scious of any such scientific ‘ prepossession ’ against mira¬ 
cles as would prevent me from accepting them as facts, if 
trustworthy evidence of their reality could be adduced. The 
question with me, therefore, is simply, ‘ Have we any ade¬ 
quate historical ground for the belief that such departure has 
ever taken place.”— Dr. Carpenter, Contemporary Review, 
yanuary, 1876, quoted by Canon Row, Bampton Lectures for 
i^']l,p. 412. 



as to Evidences. 


73 


indebted for the thoughts I am to present in 
this Lecture), that our modern belief in the in¬ 
variability of the forces of the material universe 
and in the continuity of nature has increased 
the evidential value of miracles, “if we could 
witness them ourselves, or their occurrence 
could be proved by demonstrative evidence. “ 
For we believe that only the power of the Cre¬ 
ator Himself could interrupt this established 
order, whereas in the early ages the belief was 
prevalent that other beings could interfere with 
and modify it. But, on the other hand, the 
difficulty of giving the satisfying proof to this 
modern demand for verification is immeasurably 
increased. 

The men of to-day will not accept a reported 
miracle—na}^ will not condescend to examine 
the evidence of the alleged occurrence. True 
that a gulf divides the pretended miraculous 
workings of Roman Catholic images and of 
spiritualistic media, from those ascribed to 
Jesus Christ ; and yet as to the evidence by 
which their reality is maintained, that attesting 
the last-named class of phenomena is unusually 



74 


Discrimination 


strong ; and, according to highest scientific 
authority, explanation of some of them is im¬ 
possible by the hypothesis either of fraud or of 
mesmeric influence. 

Let us, then, recognize with all frankness the 
difficulty of an honest seeker for truth in our 
day, in receiving the Gospel story of the mira¬ 
cles of Christ. First, he must have a special 
historical training to fit him to appreciate the 
mass of historic testimony, complicated and 
tedious, by which the truth is sustained ; or 
else must take his belief at second hand, against 
which the very spirit gotten from his age re¬ 
volts. He is met by advocates of the new 
learning, who tell him that, granting the record 
to be genuine, and the witnesses, whose testi¬ 
mony is there written, to have been honest, yet 
were they deluded, laboring under mental hal¬ 
lucination which mistakes subjective impres¬ 
sions for objective reality, a phenomenon which 
has been frequent in all ages of the world ; and 
bids him remember that even good Sir Mat¬ 
thew Hale could condemn a woman to death 
for witchcraft. He will ask him how he can dis- 



as to Evidences, 


75 


tinguish clearly and unmistakably, with such 
absolute certainty as to justify decision of the 
question as to ascribing divine honors to a man, 
between the alleged marvels of the New Tes¬ 
tament and those which, resting on attestation 
almost as incontrovertible, are yet rejected as 
unrealities. And, Christian men and women. 
Clergy and Laymen, ye who teach and ye who 
learn, let us honestly recognize the embarrass¬ 
ment of the honest mind ; let us not denounce 
him for his refusal to accept the story of this 
natural and glorious manifestation of the God¬ 
head which was in our Lord Jesus Christ ; 
rather let us seek to find other pathway by 
which he may be introduced to the All-glorious 
Presence, that seeing Him he may recognize 
the lineaments of Deity, and know with us that 
it is but natural “ that mighty works do show 
forth themselves in Him." Yes, let us learn 
the wisdom shown by the man who had follow¬ 
ed Jesus from the place where John baptized, 
to Cana of Galilee, and who would bring his 
friend to the blessed knowledge which he him¬ 
self had gained. “ Philip findeth Nathanael, 



76 


Discrimination 


and saith unto him, We have found Him of 
whom Moses in the law and the prophets did 
write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 
How natural the reply we hear, what perfect 
type and prophecy of the answer of scepticism 
in all time : “ Can there any good thing 
come out of Nazareth?” Shall the order of 
nature be violated, and its continuity broken ? 
Shall new species be evolved from antecedents 
offering no such prospect ? What evidence can 
suffice to convince of such monstrous develop¬ 
ment ? And the answer is so simple, so plain : 
there is nor argument from prophecy accom¬ 
plished, nor from miracle wrought ; there is no 
adducing of the authority of person ; the words 
of witness which John Baptist spake are not 
rehearsed ; no, ” Come and see” ; come see 
Him for yourself that He is His own witness ; 
that His words. His deeds. Himself declare 
that He is the Christ whom Jehovah did prom¬ 
ise. Yes, my friends, here in the very begin¬ 
ning of the history of the kingdom of God upon 
earth is set forth the divine model of the Chris¬ 
tian evidences, even that Jesus is Himself the 



as to Evidences, 


77 


evidence of His divine origin and mission, and 
that the showing Him, who and what He is, is 
the first, the chief thing to do, that men may 
believe in Him. 

In the early days of the Christian Church, 
when Christian apologists were contending 
against Pagan misbelief and superstitious idol¬ 
atry, and seeking to supplant them with Chris¬ 
tian truth, “with them the moral aspects of 
Christianity preponderate over the miraculous, 
as the chief means of winning the assent of the 
heathen to the Gospel.” * And surely to-day 
the demand for verification, the latest offspring 
of modern thought, leads us to the necessary 
return to this oldest method of defending and 
advocating our religion. What can we show 
to men as capable of this universal test, that 
seeing they may believe ? I answer : we can 
show them Jesus Christ as the miracle of mir¬ 
acles, for Whose being and actions the known 
forces of the universe are inadequate to account, 
and that His Presence and action are capable 


Row’s Bampton Lectures, p. 32. 



78 


Discrimination 


of verification in the history of the past and the 
facts of the present. . 

I. The influence of Jesus Christ is the most 
palpable fact in the history of mankind. It 
may, I think, be said, without fear of contra¬ 
diction, that even as the chronology of our age 
takes as its starting point the supposed year of 
His birth, that so the course of events in the 
development of mankind morally, and indiiect- 
ly politically, has received more modification 
from this cause than from all others combined. 
Says Mr. Lecky, the infidel historian of 
morality : “It w^as reserved for Christianity 
to present to the world an ideal character, 
which through all the changes of eighteen cen¬ 
turies has filled the hearts of men with an im¬ 
passioned love, and has shown itself capable of 
acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and 
conditions ; has not only been the highest pat¬ 
tern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its 
practice, and has exerted so deep an influence 
that it may be truly said that the simple record 
of three short years of active life has done 
more to regenerate and to soften mankind than 



as to Evidences. 


79 


all the disquisitions of philosophers, and than 
all the exhortations of moralists.”* Here is a 
fact, capable of verification, and verified under 
the inspection of one unwilling to admit the 
further fact claimed to be its only adequate ex¬ 
planation. 

II. Again, the Christian Church is a fact. 
Its presence in the world can be traced without 
effort for nearly nineteen hundred years, as the 
home of that spiritual influence whose effect in 
the softening and regenerating of mankind the 
historian finds so marvellous, and as the ap¬ 
pointed agent for its diffusion. By undisputed 
evidence we can verify its humble beginnings 
in Jerusalem, its gradual establishment in every 
portion of the great empire, until at the end 
of three hundred years it welcomes the great 
Emperor within its doors, and the history of 
Christian civilization begins. 

III. But, further, this power which has been 
so mighty in the past that the infidel must con¬ 
fess “ that the simple record of three short years 
of active life has done more to regenerate and 

* Lecky, “ History of Morality,” vol. ii. p. 8. 



8 o 


Discrimmation 


to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of 
philosophers, and than all the exhortations of 
moralists,” is claimed to be as active and 
efficient now ; and this fact is capable of veri¬ 
fication by you and me. 

Certainly the kingdom of Christ, the Church 
of Jesus, is still a present and potential factor 
of our nineteenth-century civilization ; and 
though its outward form be different from that 
which welcomed Constantine, in that the one 
organization of that day is now divided into 
many, yet each and every part still claims to be 
builded on the one foundation, Jesus Christ ; 
that its cause of being is the worship of Christ ; 
that its message is to proclaim the redemption 
He has made ; and that the blessing it has to 
offer in His name is His regenerating Spirit. 

More than this : some of the existing organ¬ 
izations are careful to maintain and assert their 
organic connection, even in external order, 
with the historic Church of the earliest day, 
that by no possibility they may lose the cove¬ 
nanted Presence of the Founder; while others 
give as the very warrant and ground of their 



as to Evidences, 


8 i 


separate existence, the fact that by omission or 
commission of discipline, by slothful neglect 
or undue performance of ritual, by a veiling of 
important revelation, or by the assertion of in¬ 
ference as dogma, the manifestation of Christ 
was hindered in the Church from which they 
came. 

Just as certainly, in all the Churches of to¬ 
day are found men who, quickened by the 
spirit of Jesus into all-surrendering self-devo¬ 
tion, and burning with a zeal as bright and as 
fierce as was St. Paul’s, have “ counted all 
things but loss for the, excellency of the knowl¬ 
edge of Christ Jesus their Lord.” You and I 
can put our hands on men who for the love of 
Christ have abandoned home and its delights, 
who have suffered shipwreck and imprisonment, 
and hunger and cold, and are just as ready as 
was Paul to brave the mad rage of a populace 
or the doubtful judgment of ignorant heathen 
magistrate, that they may publish among the 
Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. 

More than this : now as aforetime there are 
daily added to the Church men and women who 



82 


Discriniination 


would be saved by this Jesus, in Whom they 
have believed with the heart, and through the 
working of His Spirit there are wrought trans¬ 
formations of character of whose reality you 
and I can testify. 

Moral miracles confront the observer on every 
hand, from the beginning of our era until now, 
which must be just as plain violation of the 
“law of nature” as those of a physical char¬ 
acter, if the conclusions of modern philosophy 
are to be accepted, “ that the forces which en¬ 
ergize in the moral world act in conformity with 
moral laws, . . . that each successive stage 

of the moral world has grown out of that which 
preceded it, that its changes are not sudden 
nor violent, but follow a law of gradual evolu¬ 
tion.” * True of the race, it is true of the in¬ 
dividual, that the present is but the fruit of the 
past, so long as only the inherent forces are in 
action, and a result manifesting purpose for 
which these jorces are not competent is a 
“ moral miracle.” 

I believe, as has already been indicated, that 
* Row’s Bampton Lectures, p. 133. 



as to Evidences. 


83 


multitudes of men are restrained from vice and 
enabled to purity and morality by the influ¬ 
ence of the Christian spirit, though they are 
not conscious of this assistance, and have not 
confessed the Christ. Certainly this must be 
true on the principle just stated, that their life 
is naturally determined by the atmosphere of 
Christian, civilization into which it is born. 
And yet in what multitude of cases we have 
seen this life, despite this its surrounding, break¬ 
ing forth into excess of riot, and at last, regen¬ 
erated and softened, made anew into the 
strength of holiness by the conscious accept¬ 
ance of Jesus Christ, and the gift of His spirit. 
Miracles ! Oh, if man be part of nature, how 
shall he not be subject to the inevitable law ? 
If in man are energizing moral forces, of 
which the power of self-determination is one, 
how shall they not be subject to moral law, 
which is just as natural as physical law ! And 
yet on every hand to-day we can behold in 
this moral sphere the water of sorrow changed 
to the wine of joy and gladness, the tempest of 
injured hate calmed into peace and love, the 



84 


Discrim ination 


legion of evil spirits cast out, the dead soul 
roused from the bier of despair and given back 
as a joy to the mother who mourned it, and all 
accomplished by belief in Jesus Christ ! 

Now all alike, Christian and Infidel, declare 
that the life portrayed in the Gospel of the 
New Testament is the fountain and origin from 
which has flowed this stream of blessing to 
mankind. The expounders of the rationalistic 
philosophy assert that this is but an “ airy 
nothing,'’ a picture of the imagination, a fan¬ 
cied ideal of perfection, on which rests this vast 
superstructure ; or at least that honest adhe¬ 
rents of a good man have dreamed dreams of 
superhuman excellence, and in blind devotion 
believed them real attributes of the man Jesus ; 
and that the thousand thousands of the best 
and bravest of the sons of men, under the in¬ 
spiration of like deluded confidence, have dared 
all and suffered all in publishing abroad the 
gospel of this ideal character. 

Then the crucial question of Christian evi¬ 
dence is reached at last: Is the character of 
Jesus Christ, which is confessedly the creator 



as to Evidences. 


85 


of all that is best in the civilization of the 
world, real or imaginary ? May we therefore 
continue to proclaim the message which nine^ 
teen centuries have heard in His name, with 
good hope that we too may find in its belief 
true ground of hope of pardon for the past and 
of help for the future ; or must we, under the 
guidance of these new teachers, confess that 
our fathers made their life journey leaning 
upon the hand of a phantom, and in a phan¬ 
tom’s arms lay down to sleep? 

It is “ an ideal character,” says the historian 
whose statement of the wondrous effect by it 
produced we have heard. What follows ? 
First of all, that if the Jesus of the Evangelists 
be an ideal creation and not an historical 
reality, then a mere shadow and spectre has 
been the efficient cause of a wider blessing than 
all the realities of earth combined. Well says 
the Canon of St. Paul’s, in contemplating this 
alternative : “If this be so, one thing is true, 
and one only—that man is walking in a vain 
shadow, and disquieting himself in vain. Why, 
then, struggle for truth ? for delusions are 



86 


Discrim ination 


mightier than realities. Let us therefore take 
refuge in delusions, for their influence for good 
has been greater than the self-sacrifice of the 
wisest and best of men. This is the alternative 
which unbelief presents to us ; and I say it is 
an alternative terrible to contemplate. If so, 
ail is vanity ; the present life is a dream, the 
life to come a blank ; and man’s only hope— 
shall I not say, his best hope ?—to be 
speedily swallowed up in that eternal silence 
out of which he has come, to which he is 
hastening, and from which there will be no 
awakening.” * 

But apart from the absolute absurdity of our 
being asked to believe that a fiction has been 
the controlling power in the development of 
modern civilization, and the basis on which 
rests nearly every institution for good in Europe 
and in America, what shall we say of the pos¬ 
sibility of such conception of ideal manhood 
being formed and delineated at the period of 
the world’s history, and among the people, 
when and where it was confessedly put forth 
* Row’s Bampton Lectures tor 1877, p. 108. 



as to Evidences. 


87 


More than this : what shall we say of the pos¬ 
sibility of such ideal character being dramatized 
by such workmen, through three years of ac¬ 
tivity, with a pervading unity in the portrayal 
which itself were am'iracleof artistic excellence 
in any age ? Where and how did they learn to 
mix the colors with which they have painted 
this image of such wondrous beauty that it has 
deluded even its own creators into the belief of 
its life, and has been the very central sun of a 
new moral universe which its own action has 
brought into being ? 

Is it conceivable that out of the material in 
their hands any man, or any number of men 
can have builded up, even upon the foundation 
of the character of a good and great man, such 
a conception as that of the suffering Redeemer, 
arrayed in a morality more sublime than the 
sages of Greece had dreamed, and teaching a 
religion worthy of Him whom they would call 
the Son of God ? Above all, of what existing 
matter will they fashion the new power which 
shall kindle anew in the cold ashes of a hope¬ 
less humanity the fire which shall cause the 



88 


Discrimination 


I 


wheels of purpose again to move, and the effort 
after holiness to be renewed ? 

The day is past when any objector to Chris¬ 
tianity will hazard the charge of conscious 
imposture upon the writers of the Gospel 
story, but the theories now promulgated, be¬ 
cause not so plainly clashing with the phe¬ 
nomena the Gospel present, are beset with 
almost equal difficulties ; and whatever be the 
modifications of the “ mythical ” hypothesis, 
it inevitably breaks down in the effort to give 
adequate explanation of the portraiture of the 
Jesus of the Evangelists, that positive fact 
which has blessed the world for nineteen hun¬ 
dred years. 

As it seems to me, this must be the method 
of our Christian defence : we must show to our 
countrymen Jesus in His life. His words. His 
works. His death. His resurrection, even as 
they are pictured for us in the Gospels, and 
demand the explanation of the existence of this 
portraiture on any other supposition than that 
of His historical reality. The reality of His 
being is ample and natural explanation of that 



as to Evidences, 


89 


we see, of the Christian Church with its mani¬ 
fold activities of blessing, and of the Christian 
spirit ever working with new creating energy ; 
and while possibly—I say “ possibly’' in its 
widest sense—the continuance of delusion may 
explain these surroundings and events of our 
daily life, though unlimited credulity must be 
demanded for the acceptance of such theory, 
the delusion of the witnesses shall be found 
utterly unequal to the unravelling of the mys¬ 
tery of the origin of the' Gospel they have 
preached. We must show to men more and 
more of the superhuman glory plainly visible in 
the Life, the miracle of miracles, and bid them 
explain it by the operation of the known forces 
of humanity working in obedience to the recog¬ 
nized laws of development. Then we will bid 
them go near and question Him of whose his¬ 
torical reality they are convinced, for whose 
words and acts and character their speculations 
are unequal to account, and they shall hear 
Him claim to be the oivn Son of the Lord God, 
to possess the attributes and exercise the power 
of His Father, and like the guileless Israelite 



90 


Discrimination 


at Cana, they too who have sought in guileless 
sincerity to know the truth shall be taught of 
the Holy Ghost to cry unto Him, “ Rabbi, 
Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King 
of Israel." 

Yes, men and brethren, here is the battle¬ 
ground of to-day, even close round about the 
holiest place, wherein the enemy is boasting 
that he has already set up his standard, the 
very " abomination of desolation," if indeed he 
has proven that the Jesus of our Gospel is but 
the ideal which enthusiasm has sublimated from 
the material of our common nature. While we 
have our Christ, living and loving, even Jesus 
Who did live and labor, and die and rise again, 
all for the children of men whose nature He 
had assumed, it matters not that many doubt¬ 
ful questions must remain unsettled, and even 
that a long line of outworks, builded, it may 
be, in the arrogance of long undisputed posses¬ 
sion, have been of necessity abandoned. Let 
it be that there are contradictions in details 
made by the sacred writers ; let it be that there 
are therein problems in metaphysics and in 



as to Evidences. 


9 


chronology of which we can give no solution ; 
we still have a God to worship, manifested unto 
us, and Who calls us by His Spirit; we are not 
without hope or without God in the world. 

It will not be expected that I shall do more 
than suggest this necessary change in the 
formation of our battle array. A volume and 
not a lecture were necessary for even the out¬ 
line of this defence ; and the volumes have 
been written, for ‘ ‘ the Church hath her doctors'' 
now as in the old time, who, in the learned 
leisure of Abbey and Cathedral close, have noted 
the drift of the shifting stream of assault, and 
have reconstructed the old barricades to resist 
it. I may be permitted, however, to illustrate 
what I have been saying of the difficulties un¬ 
der which any and all the mythic theories labor 
in their attempted comprehension of the phe¬ 
nomena of the evangelic record. 

Manifestly the mythologists, numerous as 
they are supposed to have been, to whose 
widely separated and independent yet united 
efforts our Gospel pictures of the Christ is to 
be ascribed, must have started from the point 



92 


Discrim mat ion 


of the ideas and feelings, moral and religious, 
possessed by the Hebrew people at the time 
this development of them was effected. Agree¬ 
ably to the assumption that the character of 
Jesus is but “ a body of idealized conceptions 
which have been created by the enthusiasm of 
His followers," * that it is entirely explained 
by the normal operation of the normal powers 
of man, there must be germ in the received 
opinions and feelings of their age which is pos¬ 
sible of development into this fairest product 
of our race. 

Now, grant that the men of the first century 
of our era had learned from the Book of Enoch 
that the Christ whom Jehovah had promised is 
to unite in His Person the divine and the 
human, yet the difficulty remains—difficulty 
made more insuperable by the very training 
they have received under the dispensation of 
Moses and the prophets—how to represent in 
action this complex Being. 

The author of the Book of Enoch gives no 
hint how to work out in detail the outline 
* Row’s “ Jesus of the Evangelists,” p. 6. 



as to Evidences. 


93 


which he has suggested, and the Jesus of our 
Gospels is separated by a great gulf from the 
Christ of his conception. More than this : as 
I have said, every indication to be gotten from 
their Old Testament Scriptures is of the impos¬ 
sibility of such union, for the Spirit of Jehovah 
dwelling in man is ever represented as totally 
distinct from him whom He inspires ; and yet, 
marvel of marvels, the “ idealized conceptions” 
of ^11 these enthusiastic followers are formed in 
one mould, and the God-man of the Gospels is 
a character pervaded by an absolute unity. 
There is never a clash or an inconsistency. 
The divine-human consciousness is portrayed 
” with an absolute uniformity of aspect through¬ 
out the whole extent of the Gospels,”* though 
confessedly the portrayal is by four different 
hands, and the unbeliever says, by a great num¬ 
ber. With one accord they represent Him as 
communing in perfect repose with the God 
whom He calls His own Father ; as all un¬ 
conscious of any illumination from without, 
which was the highest claim of the old-time 
* Row’s “Jesus of the Evangelists,” p. 19. 



94 


Discrimination 


prophet ; as never once speaking, “ Thus saith 
the Lord, ” but always, “/say unto you” ; and 
with as perfect accord they ascribe to Him the 
very perfection of humanity in the methods of 
His approach to men. ” The divine light has 
been enshrined by the mythologists in a purely 
human temple.” 

As in His words, so in His acts, there is this 
calmest repose of divine majesty environed by 
the intensest humanity ; in word and act alike 
there is the union of unlimited self-assertion 
and self-abnegation as complete : never once 
appealing for sanction of His word to the 
authority of God, never once ascribing the 
miraculous work to the power of His Father ; 
and yet the asserted authors of these pretty 
stories to glorify the memory of a good man 
must have remembered that for just this failure 
” to give God the praise,” Moses their father 
was excluded from the Land of Promise. Is it 
conceivable that with no other suggestions than 
these, any genius, any enthusiasm of one or of 
many can have fashioned such a character ? 

If we look for a moment at the moral teach- 





as to Evidences. 


95 


ing they have put in His mouth, the question, 
where have they learned it, can find no an¬ 
swer. Will the concession to Jesus of the 
loftiest genius adequately explain its origin ? 
History proves that “ no human being, how¬ 
ever exalted may have been his genius, has 
been able wholly to emancipate himself from 
the conditions imposed on him by his birth, 
and the moral and spiritual atmosphere in 
which he was educated. ” * 

What were the conditions and atmosphere in 
which Jesus of Nazareth and His followers 
were born ? They were the members of an 
arrogant, exclusive race, which at this particu¬ 
lar period was become to the last degree fanat¬ 
ical and superstitious. This is so indisputably 
true that, in the opinion of Mr. J. Stuart Mill, 
it is simply incredible that the discourses at¬ 
tributed to Him can have been invented by the 
Evangelists, or even by the Apostle Paul. 
Whence, then, this wisdom to the carpenter’s 
son of Nazareth—this wisdom which has re¬ 
modelled the ethics of the world—nay, has 
* Row’s Bampton Lectures for 1877, p. 134. 




96 


Discrimination 


built up new system for which before Him no 
foundation had been laid? Yes, I say, built 
up new system, though it be at the same time 
gratefully confessed that the human reason is 
equal to the discovery of moral truth ; and 
more than this, that moral precepts of highest 
elevation are to be found in the writings of the 
ancient heathen authors, albeit Mr. Buckle’s 
sneering assertion that Jesus’ system is not 
original rests upon but three of such quotations, 
and although historic criticism almost demon¬ 
strates the fact that neither Jesus Christ nor 
any one of the possible mythologists can have 
had acquaintance with these ancient writings. 

What are the characteristics of the moral 
teaching of Jesus Christ which distinguish it 
from that of all who have preceded or followed 
Him ? I answer that it is the proclamation of 
principles to be the foundation of all moral 
duty, as wide as the world, as universal as hu¬ 
manity ; and secondly, that He reveals the 
power of faith, faith in a Person as the renova¬ 
tor of the moral nature by making obedience 
to the moral law a possibility. Where did the 



as to Evidences. 


97 


carpenter’s son, who has sat at the feet of no 
teacher, who among the teachers of his nation 
could have heard no idea of duty as wider than 
from Dan to Beersheba, and could have heard 
of the power of faith from none that lived on 
earth, oh, where can he have learned this wis¬ 
dom which has made the world wise, this 
strength which lias strengthened our race ? 

We read on in the story of this mysterious 
Being, of matchless words and miraculous deeds 
for which some explanation must be given, and 
we reach at last the catastrophe. The good 
man, after supping with His friends on the oc¬ 
casion of an ancestral national festival, begins 
to be exceeding sorrowful, and to speak words 
which His companions cannot fail to understand 
as betokening the apprehension of impending 
disaster. One of the little company has by 
Him been charged with treachery, and has gone 
at His bidding to complete the detected be¬ 
trayal. With a tenderness which is exquisite. 
Jesus speaks words of comforting promise to 
these sorrowing ones ; talks to them of the 
glory which shall at last be the victor’s reward, 




98 


Discrhnination 


though now He must be wounded and die, and 
that glory He says His friends shall share. 
Like a menial servant he washes the feet of 
these wondesing disciples, to teach them their 
highest glory in being ministering servants to 
the universal brotherhood. Then He goes 
away to the solitude of a garden, and alone 
wrestles in an agony of prayer, while those 
whom He has asked to watch with Him are 
asleep in indifference. Suddenly the silence of 
the night is startled by the shouts of a multi¬ 
tude, and its darkness illumined by the flam¬ 
ing torches which they bear. The good man 
advances to meet them, and asks for whom they 
are thus seeking. They tell Him, “ Jesus of 
Nazareth.” “Jesus saith unto them, I am 
He. ... As soon then as He had said 
unto them I am He, they went backward and 
fell to the ground.” 

He is quickly seized and bound and led away 
to the palace of the high priest, where exam¬ 
ination is to be held. The night passes away 
amid the jeers of the brutal soldiery, who be¬ 
guile the hours with mocking, sport of their 





as to Evidences, 


99 


prisoner. The morning dawns, and He is led 
away to Pilate the governor, who alone can 
give sentence of death. The prisoner stands 
in dignified silence. He knows that defence is 
vain. He will answer never a word to the Gov¬ 
ernor’s questions. He is fulfilling, as He said, 
the decrees of His Father, and in His Provi¬ 
dence He will trust. The coward condemna¬ 
tion quickly follows, and the good man toils 
away to Calvary, staggering under the burden 
of the cross ; but even in that extremity He can 
speak words of consolation and of warning to 
the women of Jerusalem. The nails are fast¬ 
ened through the quivering flesh, and the cross 
is uplifted. Three awful hours pass by ere the 
end comes. Again and again the Sufferer 
speaks : with the calmness of absolute self-con¬ 
fidence He gives assurance of salvation to the 
robber hanging by His side, and with the 
thoughtful tenderness of human affection com¬ 
mends His mother to the care of His friend. 
He remembers to speak sublimest prayer for 
the pardon of the ignorant perpetrators of the 
death He is dying, and even to effect fulfilment 



lOO 


Discrimination 


of the least predicted detail of. the transaction ; 
and then, with perfect control of the event, 
having commended His spirit into the hands of 
His Father, He bowed His head and died. 

Men and brethren, there is no dispute as to 
the reality of the death by crucifixion of one 
Jesus of Nazareth at Jerusalem under the reign 
of Pontius Pilate ; but come and see, is not this 
the description of the death of a superhuman 
Being ? And yet what difficulties the dreamers 
of such splendid vision have overcome in its 
depicting! 

Remember, we saw that, their effort was to 
idealize the character of a good and great man 
into the conception, possibly suggested by the 
Book of Enoch, of a Christ in Whom the divine 
and the human shall be united. Their powers 
shall be put to fullest test, now that they 
come to portray the death of such a Being, 
although there is no suggestion of the death 
of that divine-human Christ in the writing 
where they learned His 'nature, and the 
apocalypse of Esdras, which tells that Messiah 
was to die, is of questionable antiquity. But 



as to- Evidences. 


lOI 


Jesus did die, and having ascribed to Him the 
attribute of Christhood, they must portray Him 
in the hour of death. Bold men they must 
have been, these fishermen, story-tellers of the 
world’s childhood, who set themselves to the 
performance of this task. Did they know the 
Greek poet’s stbry of the rock-bound hero, the 
son of a god, yet of woman born, and from 
that learn to picture the suffering Christ ? Ah, 
wonderful as is the creation of .^schylus, who 
would yenture to compare it with that of these 
ignorant legend-mongers who have given us 
our dying Redeemer ? See, my friends, the 
enthusiasts must all agree in the difficulties to 
be encountered and in the methods by which 
they shall be overcome ; for they have been 
overcome, and in the Gospel narrative is ex¬ 
hibited a death in perfect harmony with the life 
gone before, a unity unbroken in the least par¬ 
ticular. The God-man is to die, take care that 
the divine is not hidden in the sufferings of the 
human ; take equal care that it lend not undue 
support to the human sufferer. More than 
this : remember that the life is to be voluntarily 



102 


Discrimination 


surrendered in self-sacrificing love, and that, 
fore-determined of God, it must be accomplish¬ 
ed by the agency of self-determining man. And 
yet see how perfectly the work is done ! What 
artist of to-day would dare add a single touch 
in hope to heighten the effect produced ? 
Here, as in all the life, there is the calmness of 
conscious divine power united to the tender¬ 
ness of human affection. Uninterrupted self- 
consciousness is united with utter forgetfulness 
of self. The presence of the traitor disturbs 
him, for He is a man, but it is the voice of a 
God which commands his departure. In the 
garden, while the divine will is in perfect accord 
with the will of His Father, there is the strug¬ 
gle, the wrestling agony, even to the point of 
bloody sweat, that the shrinking human will 
may come into like conformity ; and through 
the humble self-surrender of the man shines 
the majesty of a God, and the soldiers go back¬ 
ward and fall to the, ground. The cross' 
weight cannot crush the love for the race to 
which He belongs, and is come to redeem ; nor 
the painful crucifixion of the flesh so engross 



as to Evidences. 


103 


the mind’s thought that he speak not pardon 
and prayer. 

Men and brethren, it is simply inconceivable 
that this wonderful creation “ was effected by 
spontaneous elaboration of mythic stories in 
the original Christian society, for the purpose 
of investing a human Jesus with the attributes 
of a divine Christ.” Nay, reason demands 
rather that the beholder to-day, as the centu¬ 
rion who stood wondering at the foot of the 
cross to which he had nailed the condemned 
criminal, shall cry out, “Truly this man was 
the Son of God.” 

But can I believe, and ask others to believe 
that this crucified Jesus did rise again from the 
dead ? Certainly, if Christ be not risen our 
preaching and our faith are vain ; certainly, 
the fact of the resurrection of Jesus is the very 
corner-stone of the edifice of salvation, the 
crowning proof of His divine mission, and of 
His power to save. The Apostle, remember, 
makes demand for this—this chief, I had almost 
said this only—as article of faith: “If thou 
shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised 



104 


Discrimination 


Him from the dead.” Can I so believe? 
Grant that He was superhuman, that He was 
morally all that in the Gospel narrative is de¬ 
clared, because to believe a reality as the orig¬ 
inal of this representation is easiest explanation 
of the phenomena. Still, can I believe that he 
did literally come back alive from the grave ? 

I answer that to my mind it is natural that 
Jesus shall rise from the dead as He foretold 
He would do, even as it is natural that disease 
and demon and death shall be subject to His 
word, because He was what He was. Yet, be 
it understood that the resurrection of Jesus 
stands bn another plane than that of the other 
New Testament miracles, as to evidential value, 
and so also as to the evidence by which it is 
assured. That one fact made secure, then all 
the rest are easy of proof—nay, need no proof : 
they are the natural workings of Him who is 
” declared to be the Son of God, with power 
by the resurrection from the dead.” And 
blessed be God that there is, as I believe, more 
evidence for the resurrection of our Lord Jesus 
Christ than for any other event in the history 



as to Evidences. 


105 


of mankind ! I must tarry for a moment to 
suggest to you, though it must be in baldest 
outline, the strength of that guarantee as it 
presents itself to me. 

The examination of the Pauline epistles, of 
which the historical character is undisputed, 
will give as necessary results— 

1. That within a period of thirty years from 
the date of the crucifixion, the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ was accepted as a fact by every 
section of the Christian Church. 

2. That the fact was accepted as the only 
foundation on which the Church was builded, 
as the very life of this system of religion, the 
source of its moral and spiritual power, and 
the pledge of its promised gift of blessed¬ 
ness. 

3. That immediately after the crucifixion the 
Church was reconstituted on the basis of this 
belief. Mark you, Paul, the man who bears 
this testimony, was an agent to destroy this 
“pernicious superstition,” and must as such 
have had every opportunity for investigating its 
origin. His testimony excludes the interval of 



io6 


Discrimination 


time necessary for this consolidation of an idle 
story, by distance and time, into an accepted 
fact. 

4. That Jesus Christ was believed by the 
whole Church to have been seen alive after His 
death and burial by a great number of people, 
singly and in companies, last of all by this 
Apostle-writer himself ; and finally, that this 
belief was from the very beginning///^ power of 
spiritual regeneration. 

There is but one hypothesis, other than that 
of the reality of the event, which can afford 
explanation of this condition of affairs, and that 
is, that this belief originated in mental delusion, 
for no theory of mythical or legendary growth, 
of gradual evolution, will comprehend these 
admitted phenomena, while the difficulties at¬ 
tending the work of mythological dramatist, 
great before, here become simply insuperable ; 
and the burden is on the unbeliever to give 
adequate account of the cause which has pro¬ 
duced and does to-day produce the mighty mir¬ 
acles in the spiritual sphere which we see and 
hear. Will the supposition above mentioned. 



as to Evidences. 


107 


of mental hallucination, give the relief we seek ? 
Let us ask it two or three questions. 

1. Were those despairing disciples who went 
weeping from the grave where they had laid 
Him, in such condition of mind as to be by a 
woman’s story kindled into such enthusiasm as 
to see visions of the risen Master, “ and on the 
strength of such a delusion to found an institu¬ 
tion which has stood the test of eighteen cen¬ 
turies” ?* Was like enthusiastic delirium im¬ 
parted to a great number of believers, so that 
they not only saw Him and heard Him speak, 
but derived from His words specific teaching, 
which led to remodelling of the Church, already 
begun in His lifetime? 

2. Were the three principles of Preposses¬ 
sion, Fixed Idea, and Expectancy, in such 
active operation in the minds of the disciples 
as to have impelled these disappointed, despair¬ 
ing followers to. mistake their visions for ex¬ 
ternal realities ? 

3. A man brought up in all the learning of 
his nation, ' ‘ exceeding zealous for the traditions 

* Row’s Hampton Lectures for 1877, p. 362. 



io8 


Discrimination 


of his fathers,” which traditions this reported 
resurrection utterly destroys ; a trusted agent of 
the Authority which would prevent the spread¬ 
ing of this delusion, journeys to a strange city, 
seeking there his recreant countrymen who have 
accepted the new faith. He says that he met 
the risen Jesus in the way ; he says that He 
talked with Him, and as the result of this be¬ 
lief, he abandons his career at Jerusalem, and 
devotes a long life, despite suffering and perse¬ 
cution of every description, to the proclama¬ 
tion of the abounding blessing for men offered 
by this ascended Christ. Let philosophy 
rationally explain these indisputable facts on 
the ground of mental hallucination. 

I said that here must be our battle-ground, 
for all depends upon its holding. Christianity 
does, by its own declarations, stand or fall with 
the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
and while we are content to maintain this line 
our success is guaranteed. Our enemies would 
gladly divert us to the defence of what are but 
outposts, if indeed they be in any sense true 
points of the Christian position ; and in gen- 



as to Evidences. 


109 


eral, the forays successful in our time, whose 
result has been to bring dismay to the fearful 
believer, have been directed upon some theory 
or inference a long way distant from this our 
citadel, but which, alas ! some of us have been 
taught to believe to be essential to the integrity 
of the Christian’s hope. Nay, here we will stand. 

Here, then, is the record of the life of 
Jesus Christ, whose existence no theory has 
been equal to explain ; a part of that record, 
a natural feature of that life, is His resurrection 
from the dead, which Is so guaranteed as to 
defy the assaults of unbelief ; here is the Chris¬ 
tian Church, and its child, Christian civiliza¬ 
tion ; and here are the marvels of renewal 
wrought day by day, verifiable and verified, ac¬ 
complished by the faith of the heart in the res¬ 
urrection of its Lord. These are the sureties 
of our hope, and all else we believe, if at all, 
only because of necessary connection with, and 
dependence upon, them. 

For example, Jesus Christ declares that the 
Old Testament writings do testify of Him, and 
His Apostle by His Spirit ascribes the utter- 



Discrim mat ion 


110 


ances of these “ holy men of old " to the mov¬ 
ing of the Holy Ghost. Therefore to me these 
writings are of authority as containing the 
Father’s testimony to the Son who should 
come, and are a helpful addition to the evi¬ 
dences of the Christ because they are the ac¬ 
count of a natural preparation of that which 
should be done.' 

The other miraculous stories of the New 
Testament, which confessedly stand on differ¬ 
ent ground from that of the resurrection, we 
believe because they are reported of Him of 
Whom they are the natural outgoing ; nay, the 
record itself which contains them we believe, 
because it enfolds Him who must be true. I 
go near and ask Him who He is, and I hear 
Him say so plainly that He and His Father are 
One, that He is from eternity, that His are the 
attributes of God. I see that this is the under¬ 
standing of His words by those to whom He 
speaks, and that their threatening words and 
stones can evoke no syllable of denial or of con¬ 
cession, and therefore, with the Apostle, I bow 
my head and worship Him, rejoicing that 



as to Evidences, 


111 


through Him we have access by one Spirit unto 
the Father. But theories of incarnation, of 
atonement, of inspiration--these are but the 
works, the necessarily imperfect works, of 
human hands. Christianity does not stand or 
fall with any one of them, and I will offer to 
my countrymen facts and not theories. I will 
even take away from their consideration these 
things which are shaken, that the “ things 
which cannot be shaken may remain." 

This leads me to remark, in conclusion, that 
perhaps the larger part of the harassing doubts 
by which believers are distressed, and of the 
obstacles by which honest inquirers are kept 
away from confession and assured hope, are 
due to their entanglement in the meshes of 
some theory of inspiration. And here I must 
again express my joyful thanksgiving that we 
at least, the children of this ancient historic 
Church, are not burdened in mind or con¬ 
science by the necessary acceptance of any 
theory. Whereas the candidate for ordination 
is required to subscribe a formula in the words, 
" I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old 



Discrim ination 


I 


112 


and New Testaments to be the word of God,” 
yet the interpretation of the object of that for¬ 
mula in the fuller statement of the Article is, that 
” Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary 
to salvation.” And therefore the maawho pre¬ 
fers to express his conviction as to the Revela¬ 
tion in the words that ” the Bible contains the 
word of God,” rather than ” A” the word of 
God, is not hindered, as it seems to me, from 
so doing, by the Standards of this Church. 

And yet, alas ! how has our ecclesiastical 
atmosphere in years past been stirred into tem¬ 
pest by the blasts of controversy upon this 
point, and our ears been weary with the denun¬ 
ciations of ‘‘ unsoundness” against those who 
in this particular seemed to dissent from the 
theory of the self-styled orthodox, who on a 
priori grounds demand the belief that ” every 
word, thought, conception, and expression in the 
Scriptures is the absolute dictation of the Spirit 
of God, and that the writers of the different 
books in the Bible have merely copied down 
what the Divine Spirit dictated to them” !* 

* Row’s “ Inspiration, its Nature and Extent,” p. 15. 



as to Evidences. 


3 


j Their opponents, gloryingas proudly in their 
heterodoxy, and publishing from the housetops 
their belief, just as entirely a priori, of the ab¬ 
sence of all other than human element in the 
record, have laughed to scorn the slavish 
puerility of the Book-worshippers, and made 
merry over the absurdities resulting from their 
system. Alas ! while the contestants have re¬ 
joiced in their struggle, the ignorant and the 
weak have sorrowed lest their hope was being 
taken away, and the unbeliever has found new 
occasion in the doubtful issue, for putting away 
the consideration of his duty. Oh, let us learn, 
and let us declare boldly, to the clearing away 
of many hazy doubts and the strengthening of 
many trembling souls, that “ if the attestation 
to any revelation that it is of divine origin is 
sufficient, our belief that it is such a revelation 
in no way depends on our views as to the na¬ 
ture and extent of the inspiration under the 
influence of which it has been communicated. ’ ’ * 
We believe that our Bible is a record of a 
revelation from our God, because of the suffi- 
* Row’s “ Inspiration, its Nature and Extent,” p. 33. 



Discrimination 


114 


cient evidence accrediting it as such ; but as to 
the nature of the inspiration vouchsafed to the 
several writers ; as to the proportion of the ele¬ 
ments, human and divine, which go to its mak¬ 
ing ; as to the manner in which the divine con¬ 
trol has been exercised over the human agent, 
we believe, as of necessity, nothingy because no 
revelation upon that matter has been given. 
Certainly, the writers of Scripture claim 
“ plenary inspiration”; it follows as of neces¬ 
sity, from the fact that if it is a revelation 
from God He will give plenary power for the 
doing of that which He wills to be done. 
Nothing can be gained by the use of this word, 
for to determine its value in any case we must 
first determine the will of the Revealer, which 
is not possible. 

Turn to the New Testament itself, and we 
read that ” God, who at sundry times and in 
divers manners spake in times past unto the 
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
spoken unto us by His Son”—nay, rather, in 
His Son. The revelation of God is the Person 
of Jesus Christ. 



as to Evidences. 


115 

We read that Jesus, when He had lived the 
life of manifestation, departing, said to the 
Apostles whom He had chosen : “ Ye shall be 
witnesses unto me.” But a few days after His 
ascension we read of the action of the remain¬ 
ing Apostles in filling the vacancy caused by the 
treachery and death of J udas, and capacity to 
bear the testimony of an eye-witness is the 
necessary qualification demanded of the man 
who shall be numbered with the eleven. These 
men go forth to bear witness of the Life : on what 
assistance do they rely ? The Lord has prom¬ 
ised the coming of the Holy Ghost, Who shall 
guide them into all the truth, evidently all the 
truth He willed them to proclaim ; Who shall 
teach them all things, manifestly all the things 
He willed them to teach, for He did not teach 
\X\^vc\ all things ; Who shall refresh-their mem¬ 
ory of the words He had spoken ; Who will en¬ 
able them to know ” things to come” ; and 
finally. Who will teach them words to answer 
when they shall stand for His sake before hos¬ 
tile tribunals. 

St. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, cata- 



ii6 


Discrim ination 


logues the spiritual gifts which the Church had 
received in fulfilment of the Lord’s promise to 
confer the energies necessary for the work He 
had given it to do ; and so far as this descrip¬ 
tion goes it affirms the influence exerted upon 
the recipient to have been limited. The special 
enlightenment is said to have been conferred 
as to a special definite subject-matter only, and 
the grace given to have operated according to 
the analogy of the ordinary faculties of the 
mind ; “ the spirits of the prophets are subject 
to the prophets.” 

What materials are here on which to base a 
general theory of the nature and extent of di¬ 
vine inspiration / And yet they are ample to 
assure me that the witnesses of the resurrec¬ 
tion, the publishers o.f the Word, should be in¬ 
fallibly guided in bearing that witness and in 
publishing that Word ; should be supernaturally 
protected from error as to the truth, the revela¬ 
tion of God in Jesus Christ. May I not rest 
here and be satisfied ? And resting here, of 
what concern to me, other than literary or an¬ 
tiquarian, are the petty variations, the minute 



as to Evidences. 


117 

discrepancies in the Sacred Records, which the 
microscopic scrutiny of unbelief has discover¬ 
ed ? I am content to wait even till the day of 
the restitution of all things, that I may know 
whether Cyrenius was once or twice governor 
of Syria ; and I will not be made unhappy be¬ 
cause Strauss boastfully asserts that St. Luke 
has made an error in describing Lysanias as 
tetrarch of Abilene in the fifteenth year of 
Tiberius Caesar. 

Having no theory to maintain, I find it but 
natural that there shall be marks of individu¬ 
ality in the writings of the Evangelists, and an 
identity of recollection and of description in 
unessential matters were as strange to me as 
were an exact similarity of style in writing, while 
this latter is no less demanded than the former 
by a verbal, mechanical theory of inspiration. 

Were two men or one the fierce occupants.of 
the dwelling among the tombs of Gadara whose 
demon owned subjection to our Christ ? What 
matters it ? . He is witnessed unto as mighty to 
overcome the Evil One who possessed the 
demoniac. . - 



Ii8 


Discrim ination 


The ordinary reader finds four different in¬ 
scriptions recorded in the New Testament as 
that which was set up over the head of the 
crucified Jesus, and the ordinary reader finds 
therein no cause for doubt or alarm, because 
each proclaims the reality of the death of the 
King and His claim to be the Christ. But her¬ 
meneutic ingenuity has suggested that St. Mat¬ 
thew copied the one in Hebrew, St. Mark that 
in Latin, and St. John that in Greek, while St. 
Luke has combined two of the inscriptions into 
one. Let this example suffice to show us the 
extremities to which men must have recourse 
in their effort to make the facts of Scripture 
harmonize with preconceived theory. 

But I may not fail, in conclusion, to call at¬ 
tention to the most serious evil which has arisen 
from this assertion of extravagant a priori 
theory of inspiration, in the conflict, with which 
it has had much to do, between the Bible reve¬ 
lation and the discoveries of modern science. 
I would certainty not be understood as laying 
the sole responsibility for this evil at the door 
of the theologian, or as failing to recognize that 



as to Evidences, 


119 

the bigotry of physical science has in its Doc¬ 
tors been as violent and as offensive as any 
that can be ascribed to the Professors of science 
theological. But the fault with us has been 
real, and has arisen in largest part, as I have 
said, from this disposition to theorize, and to 
the feeling of ignorant fear lest the letting go 
of the theory should be letting go of the faith. 
Was it not because of the exigencies of a par¬ 
ticular theory of inspiration that for so long a 
time the battle raged between the testimony of 
Genesis and the testimony of the rocks, then 
newly discovered, upon the battle-field of the 
creation ? And constrained by this feeling of 
loyalty to a theory of inspiration as though it 
were loyalty to Christ, how hardly and with what 
unseemly compromises and flank movements did 
Theology retreat from the ground, forgetting 
that the rocks are as truly the scrolls of His 
writing as those Oracles whereof a chosen people 
was the guardian ? 

Is it not in obedience to a mechanical theory 
of inspiration that to-day men are afraid lest 
the religion of Jesus is going to perish if so be 



120 


Discrimination 


that the modern scientific hypothesis, as to the 
development of the universe and of man by 
process of evolution, shall be proved correct ? 
Shall we strain the language of the writing to 
make it square with the discoveries of science, 
or shall we deny the alleged facts ? Shall we 
not rather learn from the great Bishop of Dur¬ 
ham, “that the only question concerning the 
truth of Christianity is whether it is a real 
revelation, not whether it is attended with every 
circumstance we should look for. And concern¬ 
ing the authority of Scripture, whether it is 
what it claims to be, not whether it be a book 
of such a sort and so promulgated as weak men 
are apt to fancy a book containing a divine 
revelation should. And therefore neither ob¬ 
scurity, nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor 
various readings, nor early disputes about the 
authors of particular parts, nor any other things 
of like kind, though they had been much more 
considerable in degree than they are, could 
overthrow the authority of Scripture, unless the 
Prophets, Apostles, or our Lord had promised 
that the book containing the Divine Revelation 



as to Evidences. 


I2I 


should be secure from these things. ” * In other 
words, that no theory of Divine Inspiration is 
itself a part of the Divine Revelation, and that 
we are incapable to determine a priori what 
such revelation must contain. Then because 
there can be no conflict between the different 
utterances of the same God, therefore no dis¬ 
covery of science can overthrow our faith ; for 
there is written no promise that the Spirit 
would communicate to Prophet or Apostle the 
truths of science, and no one of them makes 
claim to such knowledge. 

The truth of Christianity then rests upon the 
reality of the Christ, and the evidence of that 
truth is the evidence of that reality. This evi¬ 
dence is sufficient and satisfying, for it is Christ 
Himself, a Being impossible to human imagina 
tion to create, and witnessed to by testimony 
which is inexplicable on the supposition of His 
unreality. Therefore, I entreat, let us present 
Christ Himself, living and omnipotent, as ir 
the days of His sojourn here, and not any,the¬ 
ories as to the mode of His being or of His re- 
* Butler’s “Analogy,” part ii. ch. 3. 









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LECTURE III. 


DISCRIMINATION AS TO RITUAL. 

" And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doc¬ 
trine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
prayers.”— Acts 2 : 4'2. 

I AM to speak this evening of the necessity 
for discrimination in reference to the sub¬ 
ject of worship or ritual ; but I am not willing 
to admit to myself or to another, that in doing 
so I am putting aside the “ weightier matters’* 
of doctrine and evidence for the consideration 
of the “ small dust of the balance,” which can 
be of no value in estimating our condition. 
To-day our mother Church of England is sorely 
perplexed by the untoward result of an effort 
to control, in this respect, the self-will of some 
of her Ministers, and the persecution alleged to 
be legalized by the Act of Parliament designed 
to regulate her public worship, has accomplished 
more in the direction of her disestablishment 


126 


Discrim inatiori 


than all the organized combinations of dissent 
with unbelief. In our own country and Church 
angry controversy about this matter has dis¬ 
turbed the peace and enfeebled the strength 
of Dioceses, which has had to the ordinary ob¬ 
server no greater gravamen than the posture of 
a Minister or the shape of his vestment ; and 
the world has made itself merry over what it 
esteems our “ much ado about nothing.” Let 
me add that educated and cultivated men and 
women are being repelled by the worship, bald 
and unadorned, of our non-liturgical brethren, 
and that perhaps largest proportion of the pros¬ 
elytes to our communion are attracted by the 
magnet of our Liturgy. 

For many reasons, then, I feel the pressing 
need of wise discrimination on this subject. 
Because our often bitter contests are so un¬ 
seemly, and because they have been of late 
years the most efficient causes of division in 
our Christian camp ; because they are an ob¬ 
stacle which they must overcome who would 
fain worship God in our old-time way, and 
often they who are just beginning to desire to 



as to Ritual, 


127 


worship Him in any way; and, because the 
Ritual of public worship is perhaps the most 
effective means of inculcating particular phase 
of Christian doctrine ; for all these reasons I 
would consider how much of liberty the individ¬ 
ual Minister and Congregation possess as to 
this function, whether it should be increased or 
diminished, and what are its only limitations. 
And I would plead that we do not in our self- 
will seek either to increase or to diminish that 
accorded to us or to our brethren, by undertak¬ 
ing to speak what neither Scripture nor Church 
has spoken. 

That the believers in the risen, ascended 
Christ, should meet in fellowship with His 
chosen Apostles, and especially on the day of 
their appointment, the day of His resurrection, 
to worship Him Whom God had declared both 
Lord and Christ, was only natural. We may 
find sufficient explanation of the origin of pub¬ 
lic Christian worship in the nature of man, and 
the belief these disciples have learned. Fur¬ 
ther than this, we must remember that these 
earliest Christians are members of the elect 



128 


Discrimination 


people,” whose very bond of national union 
was kinship to one ancestor and the worship of 
the God Jehovah, who had made covenant with 
him. 

Now, as baptized confessors of Jesus Christ 
they believe themselves partakers of a ” better 
covenant, established upon better promises,” 
because they have been made one with Him 
Who is its Mediator ; they are the citizens of a 
holy nation, they are a royal priesthood, whose 
bond of union is the kinship not of blood but 
of faith, and the worship of God in Jesus Christ. 

’Tis only natural that we find them, in the 
great congregation on the Sabbath day, min¬ 
gling their prayers to Jehovah with those of all 
the sons of Abraham ; that they still rejoice in 
the assurance of pardon which the flaming 
burnt-offering gives, and in the perfumed cloud 
of incense, the symbol of accepted prayer. 
And with, as yet, no design to separate them¬ 
selves into a new religious Communion essen¬ 
tially different from that into which they were 
admitted in infancy ; with no thought even to 
constitute a sect within the National Church ; 



as to RitiiaL 


29 


not yet understanding that their ascended Lord 
did by His own death make an end of sacri¬ 
fice, they just as naturally come together, as 
Christians, to break bread from house to house, 
as “ they continue,” as Hebrews, ” daily with 
one accord in the temple.” Believing in God 
manifested in Jesus Christ, they must meet to 
worship Him^ even the God into Whose Name 
of triple Personality they, by commandment of 
the Lord Jesus, have been baptized. 

True, we may find, as the Dean of Norwich 
has done, the special charter of all public Chris¬ 
tian worship in the promise of our Lord, of 
peculiar efficacy to the prayer wherein even two 
are agreed, and find therein at the same time 
the almost necessity, certainly the suggested 
value, of a prescript form. ” If two of you 
shall agree on earth,” the Lord Jesus said to 
His disciples, ” as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my 
Father which is in heaven.' ’ * But it has been 
suggested : ” This must be primarily a continu¬ 
ation of the second measure prescribed in cases 
* St. Matthew 18 ; 19. 



130 


Discrimination 


of offence, when two or three witnesses were to 
be called,”* and we do not need such specific 
warrant for assembling ourselves together. It 
is the natural, the necessary expression of our 
common faith, that we come to tell it each to 
other for mutual help, and that we make it the 
basis of a common prayer to our common 
Father ; and it was the lesson taught by the 
divine method of training the religious teachers 
of the world. 

In this our day of literary culture and ad¬ 
vanced thought, intellectual fastidiousness is 
crying out against the homely fare which the 
Pulpit provides, and professes itself unable to 
find satisfying refreshment in the “old, old 
story,” because of the lack of skill in him who 
offers it. Even Christian men are heard excus¬ 
ing their own absence from the Church’s wor¬ 
ship on the Lord’s Day, on the ground that 
the Press has come into the office once exclu¬ 
sively held by the Pulpit, and that from printed 
page, in the comfortable quiet of their own 
Library, they can get more spiritual sustenance 
* Lange, Commentary in loco. 



as to Ritual. 


131 

than from the sacred Desk in the midst of the 
Congregation. 

May I not remind them that they are doing 
violence to the Christian instinct, as to the 
Apostolic precept, in thus refusing to make one 
of the assembly met in the Lord’s house ? 
May I not remind them that to the ear of the 
loyal, faithful subject of the distant king, the 
tone and accent and language which tell of 
the Fatherland must be sweet and attractive, 
though the speaker have but little art of dis¬ 
course, though his thought be feeble and inco¬ 
herent ? And may I not bid them consider 
that like as the natural expression of the Chris¬ 
tian heart is, “I was glad when they said unto 
me, we will go into the house of the Lord, ’ ’ even 
so the refusal to gratify that natural desire is 
the most effective means possible to prevent 
its strengthening ; and that when the heart no 
longer cries out for the company of the saved 
it begins to cease to hope for the vision of the 
Saviour ? Above all, may 1 not remind them, 
that though the preached word, foolishness as 
it seems to the world, is the appointed instru- 



132 


Discrim ination 


ment by which the Holy Ghost will work to 
convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, 
and of judgment ; yet, that the baptized disci¬ 
ples of that earliest day, who must be our ex¬ 
emplars, came not to their upper chamber to 
hear a Sermon, but to worship Christ ? It was 
“ upon the first day of the week, when the dis¬ 
ciples came together to break bread, Paul 
preached unto them.” 

I say, then, that the assembling of Christian 
men to worship God in Jesus Christ is natural, 
and the question at once arises. What shall be 
the form of such worship ? I answer, that 
plainly the one single peculiar act of Christian 
worship, as we are taught by the Christian 
records, and by the devotional exercises of other 
religions, is the “breaking of bread.” A 
moment’s consideration will serve to assure us 
of this fact. Prayer is as universal as man¬ 
kind ; the reading of sacred writings, and their 
exposition by duly appointed officers, have been 
features of the worship of all the religions in 
any sense worthy of that name. Even Baptism 
was clearly a rite of the dispensation of Moses, 



as to Ritual. 


133 


and was practiced as part of the initiatory cere¬ 
monies admitting to the sacred mysteries of 
other ancient nations. 

The record is of those three thousand bap¬ 
tized on the Day of Pentecost, those first con¬ 
verts made after the Master was gone away, 
that they “ continued steadfastly in the apos¬ 
tles’ doctrine and fellowship.” Yes, doubt¬ 
less they longed to know more and more 
of the heavenly doctrine of which they had 
learned, but the very first principle, even the 
resurrection of the crucified Jesus, and there¬ 
fore they clung eagerly to the men who had 
been eye-witnesses of His majesty, and ” did 
eat and drink with Him after He rose from 
the dead.” But they continued as well in 
” prayers,” doubtless the public prayers of the 
assembled Church, that they might learn how 
He the Master had taught His disciples to 
pray ; and there is added, ” the breaking of 
bread ” as part of their newly learned worship. 
This leads me to remark, further, that while 
apparently the public worship of the Church of 
the early days always included ” the breaking 



134 


Discrimination 


of bread,” and that this Communion was ad¬ 
ministered not only weekly but daily, and per¬ 
haps even at every ordinary meal, there is yet 
no injunction of any Apostle as to the proper 
frequency of the Ordinance, and just as little 
direction as to the mode of proceeding in its 
celebration ; indeed, there is not from any 
Apostle any positive command that it be admin¬ 
istered at all. How instructive is this silence 
as to the wisdom of the founders of what was to 
be a Catholic Church, fitted in all things to be 
the spiritual home of “ all sorts and conditions 
of men !” And how full of teaching for us, as 
to the tolerant concession of liberty in the mere 
form of expression, if only the substance of the 
faith be kept intact ! 

Public Christian worship is, as I have said, 
a necessary outgrowth of a common belief 
in the one Lord, but the manner of its 
performance will be dependent upon the cul¬ 
ture and taste of the worshippers, and perhaps 
more upon the point of doctrinal develop¬ 
ment they have reached, and the special as¬ 
pect of the redemptive work which they have 



as to Ritual. 


135 


most fully seized. Hence its form will ever 
be variable, while its idea remains unchanged 
and unchangeable. As our article expresses 
it, “It is not necessary that traditions and 
ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like ; 
for at all times they have been divers, and may 
be changed according to the diversity of coun¬ 
tries, times, and men’s manners, so that noth¬ 
ing be ordained against God’s word.’’ 

I have found it profitable, at times, in the 
presence of the gorgeous ceremonial of some 
great occasion, to journey, in memory, back to 
that borrowed room at Jerusalem, where sor¬ 
rowing disciples are ignorantly listening to the 
leave-taking of their Master. How different is 
the seed just being cast into the ground, from 
this flowering glory we now behold and enjoy ! 
There is the familiar unrestraint of mutual 
affection and confidence ; every attitude and 
every word is the feature of a family reunion, 
rather than of a solemn function. Did they in 
any sense realize, I have wondered, these He¬ 
brews who are there, that the simple act of 
blessing and consuming the bread and wine is 



136 


Discrimination 


to take the place of their Passover feast, with 
all its magnificence of ritual; that it is to be 
the central act of a world’s worship ? 

But I must remember as well that nowhere is 
like simplicity and familiarity prescribed for 
the conduct of this Feast by those who shall 
come after, and that such mode of its celebra¬ 
tion were unnatural to us. 

Further, I recall that in the only account of 
the worship of the Apostolic Church, from 
which we can gain even the least idea of the 
manner of its performance, St. Paul rebukes 
the Corinthians for their slovenly disregard of 
the merely external proprieties. He seems to 
find in this the evidence of their want of appre¬ 
ciation of the truth of the Sacrament, to which, 
as cause, he attributes the result, that “ many 
are weak and sickly among you (them), and 
many sleep.” 

Now, on the one hand, it seems to me to fol¬ 
low inevitably from such rebuke administered 
at this time, that the Corinthian Christians can¬ 
not have been taught by their father in the Gos¬ 
pel any doctrine of the Lord’s Supper which at 



as to Ritual. 


137 


, all approximates that of the Roman Mass, the 
Lutheran Miracle, or the High Anglican Pres¬ 
ence ; for it is inconceivable that men so in¬ 
structed could so soon have fallen away into 
such gross irreverence of behavior toward their 
God, there present under the form of bread 
and wine. 

But, on the other hand, it is just as plain 
that St. Paul here gives no warrant for what 
has been called “ the piety of irreverence,” or 
for the assumption that absence of ‘‘ bodily ex¬ 
ercise” is irrefragable proof of the activity of 
the spirit. Most important of all, let us note 
that here, where it was most naturally to be 
expected, he gives no Apostolic directory of 
worship, save only to recite the account he 
had received of the Lord Jesus, of the institu¬ 
tion of the Christian Passover. And this is 
all : we look in vain through the Scripture 
history for other, even the least suggestion of 
what the ritual of the Lord’s Supper should be, 
save only the Lord’s ” do this,” “what and 
as ye have seen me do.” The Apostle seems 
to promise in his letter that he would give them 



138 


Discrim ination 


more definite instructions when he should come 
to Corinth. “ The rest/' he says, “ will I set 
in order when I come."* There were, we 
must suppose, other irregularities in their 
manner of keeping the feast, about which he 
would give authoritative regulation whenever 
he should be present with them. I cannot help 
asking. Was he withheld by the Divine Spirit 
from incorpoiating these minutiae in the Letter 
which was to make part of the Church's " Rule 
of Faith and Practice" ? 

The question presents itself boldly at this 
point, " Why, then, have any Liturgy.?" If 
confessedly there is no record of any possess¬ 
ing Apostolic sanction, then presumably the 
custom in the Churches founded by the labors 
of inspired men was for the mode to be deter¬ 
mined and provided by the Elder who should 
be on any occasion thus ministering before the 
Lord. Doubtless each in conformity to St. 
Paul's account of " that which he received of 
the Lord Jesus," would, as part of his Service, 
recite the words of Institution, as has been the 

* I Cor. xi. : 34. 



as to Ritual, 


139 


custom of all Ministers in every age and of 
every sect ; but for the rest, why shall not the 
Elders in every city be free now as then ? 

For myself I answer, that to my mind the 
presumption is rather that each Apostle gave 
specific directions as to the performance of 
this duty to the Elders whom he ordained ; for 
surely, after the experience at Corinth, so wise 
a man as St. Paul would not have opened wide 
the floodgates of error in leaving “ at the 
mercy of the individual minister presiding over 
the congregation at the time of the celebra¬ 
tion,” a service which ” enshrines such a mys¬ 
tery.” * I do not say that any form of words 
is essential to make the Sacrament a valid means 
of grace, for I find no such condition in Holy 
Scripture ; but I do say that being our Master’s 
own appointment, for the expression of the 
common faith of His people in common prayer 
to Him, for communion with one another, and 
for receiving the common blessing His grace 
will bestow, it is natural that prearranged cere- 

* Sadler, Liturgies and Ritual, “ The Church and the 
Age,” p. 264. 



140 


as to Ritual. 


this particular department, and of the corre¬ 
sponding development of the Liturgy to be its 
expression. It is a long road from that gather¬ 
ing of the disciples to break bread, when 
“ Paul preached unto them,’’ unto the celebra¬ 
tion of High Mass in a Roman cathedral of 
to-day, where, with all the dramatic surround¬ 
ings of music and painting, posture and cos¬ 
tume, a Priest offers Jesus Christ the Son of 
God, as unbloody sacrifice to be the propitiation 
for the sins of the living and the dead ; and 
then in jewelled Monstrance uplifts for the wor¬ 
ship of the congregation this Christ thus “ vis¬ 
ibly set forth, crucified among them.” But 
we may tarry at numerous resting places before 
we come to this, the very ultima thule of sacra¬ 
mental discovery ; they are at greatly varying 
distance from the original starting-point, in 
doctrine and in its representation ; but I would 
have you mark only this, that in general the 
departure from the simplicity of Apostolic wor- 
ship is in exact proportion to increased appre¬ 
ciation of the significance and value of the sac¬ 
ramental act. I say ‘ ‘ in general, ’ ’ for, as al- 



Discrimination 


141 


monial shall be its setting, of which His own 
acts and words at the time of its Institution 
must be the foundation, but of which the de¬ 
tails are variable and to be fixed in every case 
by the proper authority. In proof that such 
prearrangement is natural, I note that even if 
the authority to which he owes allegiance has 
left to the individual Minister the freedom of 
extempore utterance in this Service, yet in gen¬ 
eral his own sense of fitness causes that his 
apparently spontaneous expressions shall be 
stereotyped. 

Now two causes will be operative to effect 
development of the Liturgy : first, the de¬ 
velopment of dogma, and the consequent 
necessary desire and endeavor to express the 
common belief in the common worship ; and, 
secondly, the aesthetic development and culture 
of the Priest and the People, and the conse¬ 
quent desire and endeavor to gratify the re¬ 
fined taste, in the acts of religious homage. 

It were wandering very far away from my 
path for me to go into the setting forth of the 
history of the progress of Christian doctrine in 



142 


D iscrim inatio7i 


ready suggested, there has been another cause 
at work to expedite this progress of liturgical 
development, which has absolutely no connec¬ 
tion with the doctrine which any Liturgy may 
enfold. 

More than this : I would not be understood 
to say that this increased appreciation of sac¬ 
ramental reality is wholly evil. Clearly our 
knowledge of Christian truth is in many partic¬ 
ulars greater than that of the earliest disciples, 
and there is no one point as to which this ad¬ 
vantage is more palpable than that we are con¬ 
sidering. I believe that in the beginning the 
social aspect of the Holy Supper was largely 
predominant : that the Agape overshadowed 
the Communion. The common meal was to 
them the symbol of their union, in poverty, and 
in danger of persecution ; the noivojvia had 
perhaps to their minds, its fullest reference to 
the “ goods" wherein all shared ; and the ideas 
of a symbolic sacrifice, and of a means of grace 
were obscured ; ideas wrapped up in the words 
of the Christ; ideas which the apprehension of 
a century later had seized and enshrined in its 



as to Ritual, 


H 3 


Liturgy ; ideas, one of which after generations 
have exaggerated into a denial of the alone 
efficacy of the “ one full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice,” ” for the sins of the whole world,” 
and the other into a mechanical theory which 
degrades the conception of spiritual worship, 
and makes the cultivation of the religious life 
the working of a machine. 

The Liturgy has in every case kept accurate 
step, with the doctrine, in its march, for they 
are tied together by closest bond, and each 
sustains the other. Ornate ritual is hardly 
possible except it be vivified by a teaching 
which it symbolizes ; and on the other hand, 
the doctrine held and taught must find, 
ought to find, its embodiment in the acts 
and words of devotion. I remember to have 
heard of most elaborate ritual being intro¬ 
duced by a Unitarian minister in one of our 
Western towns, in the administration of a Sac¬ 
rament which his doctrine, if truly set forth by 
the author of ” Ecce Homo,” esteems as only 
” a club dinner,” and naturally the effect was 
only contemptuous laughter, for there was no 



144 


Discrimination 


reality within to give life to the outward ex¬ 
hibition. The ritual routine is only as the pic¬ 
tures stained into the window-panes, unmean¬ 
ing and offensive, whether they be elaborate or 
simple, until the light behind brings out the 
colors and the design ; and just as really the 
light of dogmatic truth must have some ritual 
screen as softening medium through which it 
may enter the eye of the beholder, else it shall 
be painful, and provoke the resistance of the 
closed eyelid. 

But, as I have already suggested, the status 
of a people in artistic and literary pursuits will 
be an index, in general, of the level of their 
liturgical necessities and desires, without any 
reference to the connection between ritual and 
dogma. This connection is certainly close, 
general, indeed almost universal, and yet 
aesthetic considerations will sometimes produce 
a ritualistic development which at first sight 
we may from this observed connection attrib¬ 
ute to an “ advance” of religious opinion. It 
is important that we bear this fact in mind, for 
it is a factor of large value in the problem of 



as to Ritual, 


145 


determining the limits of liturgical liberty, and 
in the formation of the judgments sometimes 
demanded as to the fact and the extent of the 
transgression of those limits by an individual 
Minister or Congregation. 

How shall these limits of liturgical freedom 
be determined ? Scripture is confessedly si¬ 
lent ; genuine Apostolic traditions, even within 
the lifetime of the Apostles, were attended by 
counterfeits which deceived those who had 
themselves been pupils of the inspired teach¬ 
ers ; naturally, necessarily, the Church of each 
age must fix them, as the Church has fixed 
them in every period of her history, and we are 
bound by the decrees of that particular Church 
by whose authority we stand to minister before 
God, as the leader of His people’s worship. 

Beyond controversy, this must be true in the 
very nature of the case—true for us all, whatever 
theory of Church government we may accept— 
whether we be adherents of the loosest system 
of Congregationalism or of the stiffest theory 
of Apostolic succession in the Episcopate. We 
are members of the Catholic Church of Christ, 



146 


Discrimination 


whatever be our conception of its character, 
notes, and limits, because we are members of 
the particular organization into which we were 
received by baptism, and not vice versd. And 
if that Body be part of the Catholic Church 
(and no one would be member of it except he 
believe it such), it must have exclusive author¬ 
ity in respect to its officers and members, to 
“ ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or 
rites of the Church, ordained only by man’s 
authority.”* The first limit, then, of our in¬ 
dividual liturgical liberty is the obligation to 
conform to the worship of that Church whereof 
we are members and ministers. 

But, secondly, the Church herself is limited 
in the exercise of her power by the truth 
whereof she is the ” witness and keeper,” so 
that in the liturgical legislation or appointment 
“nothing be ordained against God’s word,” 
and “ so that all things be done to edifying.” 

Then also of necessity this obligation, resting 
upon a “ particular church” to decree nothing as 
ceremonial which shall possibly convey to the 
* “ XXXIX. Articles of Religion,” Art. xxxiv. 



as to Ritual, 


147 


beholder or the worshipper other conception of 
God, or of the means of securing part of His 
salvation than that set forth in Holy Scripture ; 
and the obligation to put immediate end to 
such false representation made in her name and 
with her apparent sanction ;—these must rest 
as truly upon the conscience of the individual 
man or minister. And he must find as real 
ground for refusal to conform, in a decreed or¬ 
dinance which to him pictures falsehood, as in 
the decreed dogma which in words asserts what 
he believes to be untrue. Truth first, and then 
authority—these the limits of our liberty in the 
matter of public worship. 

And, further, in the exercise of this sovereign 
authority the Church of the age must regard 
the wisdom of those who possessed the special 
divine guidance to which she can lay no claim, 
and thankfully receive and follow the advice 
given by their practice, to set up no standards 
of worship as immutable. But rather, having 
regard to the ever-changing conditions of man’s 
life, to the rise and fall of philosophic systems, 
and the consequent modifications of the forms 



148 


Discriinmation 


of theological statement ; to the progress of 
art and the resulting modifications of devo¬ 
tional expression, she will expect the demand 
for liturgical enrichment and liturgical free¬ 
dom, a demand expressed most often by seem¬ 
ing violation of existing law ; and finally, in the 
wise concession to such demand, shall “ all 
things be done to edifying.” 

These are the principles on which, as it 
seems to me, the question, “ How shall we 
worship God ?” must always receive answer in 
every age and from every Church. Let us now 
endeavor their application to the present con¬ 
dition of that venerable and Apostolic Com¬ 
munion whereof we are members. 

We hear on every hand that with us this is a 
day of lawlessness ; that rubrics are dead let¬ 
ters ; that the ” godly admonitions” of the 
Bishops, rarely spoken, are without effect, be¬ 
cause the author of the admonition has no 
power to compel compliance ; that, in a word, 
the Church’s Ritual-law is such a mass of in¬ 
coherency that obedience is not possible, and 
disobedience not a fault. One of our most 



as to RituaL 


149 


venerable Bishops has published, in his Charge 
to his Diocese, that the day is come when every 
man does, liturgically, what is right in the sight 
of his own eyes ; and he seems to express his 
satisfaction in such condition of things. I can 
hardly consent that such is fair description, and 
yet I am perfectly aware that the violations of 
our Ritual-law are frequent, on the right hand 
and on the left, by omission and by commis¬ 
sion, by defect and by excess. I am quite pre¬ 
pared to be satisfied with some of these viola¬ 
tions, and to find in them no disloyalty to the 
Church, but only the demand for larger liberty, 
that “all things may be done to edifying.” 
To me many of these violations are but the 
aclioxn of the giant rousing up from his sleep 
of self-indulgence to recognize the battle that 
is before him, and shaking himself free from 
the withes of obsolete injunctions, which are 
dead and dry and cannot bind his strength, de¬ 
spite their apparent freshness and beauty. 
Yes, men and brethren, in my judgment the 
rubrical offences whereof in some quarters out¬ 
cry is made, and whose chief value to the 



150 


Discrim ination 


offended is that they are offset and defence for 
their own departures in the opposite direction, 
are just the failure to try to force the living, 
growing Church of Christ in this land, into a 
mould which was fashioned for other material 
under other circumstances, and the failure to 
insist that if it will not consent to be thus cir¬ 
cumscribed in its development it shall not grow 
at all. 

Let me give you an illustrative exam¬ 
ple. I remember the experience of an earnest 
Clergyman in a great city, who, desiring to give 
opportunity to the business men for Lenten 
prayer and meditation, advertised that there 
would be a “ half-hour service” in his Church, 
which was situated close to the busiest mart of 
the city, each day at noon. The Ordinary 
being informed, in answer to inquiry, that the 
purpose was to read the Litany and make a 
short address, said that he could not do so 
unless he should theretofore say the Order for 
Morning Prayer, either in the Church or in his 
own Study. 

I thank God that I can believe that the day 



as to Ritual. 


151 


for such mad consistency is past, and that such 
slavish subservience to the letter of the E.ubric 
would not be possible now. The “ Rubric of 
Common Sense,” as it has been called, has 
come to be understood as a necessary rule for 
the interpretation of the Book of Common 
Prayer, as of any other such document. But 
alas ! this is the evil of our present condition : 
these violations of the Church’s Order in partic¬ 
ulars wherein necessity or manifest expediency 
constrains that the law be ignored, committed 
with implied or even explicit consent of the 
Church authority, are made excuse or defence 
of other violations of the Church’s Order, which 
are at the same time violations of the Church’s 
truth. A man who shakes his dusty door-mat 
in front of his house, and a man who attempts 
to take the life of his neighbor, are in one 
sense and in some cities equally violators of the 
law, for it as plainly prohibits one action as the 
other. And yet the one prohibition is based 
upon regard for the comfort of the citizens, and 
the other upon the sanctity of a God-given life, 
and only a most disingenuous special pleading 



152 


Discrhnination 


could defend the crime by comparing it as a 
violation of law with the misdemeanor. But 
this distinction seems to be often utterly 
ignored in the formation of judgments, by indi¬ 
viduals, about ecclesiastical offences. Because 
one man neglects to say, “ Peace be to this 
house,” as he enters the abode of his sick 
parishioner, therefore another is to be justified 
in mutilating the Office for infant baptism that 
it may not speak to the Congregation the doc¬ 
trine which the Church has plainly set forth in 
her Articles ; and another must be suffered to 
uplift the elements of the Holy Communion, 
and to do before them every act that is nat¬ 
urally expressive of worship, though the Church 
has declared, as plainly as words can declare, 
that she teaches no such doctrine of t}ie precious 
gift of the “ spiritual food and sustenance.” 

I would not seem to be a partisan ; I would 
not be understood as pleading for liberty for 
one school of thought in the Church, and for 
the greater repression of another ; but I must 
emphasize the radical difference between viola¬ 
tions of the fundamental Protestant truth of 



as to Ritual. 


153 


the Church, of the doctrine which was the very 
inspiration of the Reformation, and the ade¬ 
quate occasion for martyr death, and violations 
of mere prescriptions of proper ministerial per¬ 
formance, whose neglect and regard are alike 
insignificant in the inculcation of truth or error. 
More than this : I would emphasize the fact 
that the very existence of difference of opinion 
upon any point makes the more obligatory the 
faithful and accurate use of the words of the 
formula having reference to that point ; that, 
permitted to wander at will over wide field of 
opinion, we must, just because of the permis¬ 
sion, the more certainly return to the ren¬ 
dezvous. 

Now, when we come to examine the Stand¬ 
ards of the Church upon the subject of the Sac¬ 
raments, we may perhaps, some of us, be 
amazed to find the large liberty of opinion 
which is allowed, and that no positive definition 
of the nature of the Sacrament of the Lord’s 
Supper has been therein promulgated. I mean, 
you will of course understand, the Standards of 
this Church, and not the recorded lucubrations 



154 


Discrimination 


of the individual Doctors who, within the lib¬ 
erty thus accorded, have furnished definitions 
hard and positive, often, alas ! married to ex¬ 
clusive denunciations of “ no-churchmanship” 
against those who in the exercise of the same 
liberty have reached other conclusions. 

The Protestant Episcopal Church proclaims, 
with no uncertain voice, that the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per is a veritable “means of grace”; that it 
“ is not only a sign of the love that Christians 
ought to have among themselves, one to an¬ 
other, but rather it is a Sacrament of our Re¬ 
demption by Christ’s death : insomuch that to 
such as rightly, worthily, and with faith receive 
the same, the Bread which we break is a par¬ 
taking of the Body of Christ, and likewise the 
Cup of blessing is a partaking of the Blood of 
Christ.” She declares in express terms that 
” Transubstantiation (or the change of the sub¬ 
stance of the bread and wine in the Supper of 
the Lord) cannot be proved by Holy Writ ; 
but is repugnant to the plain words of Scrip¬ 
ture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, 
and hath given occasion to many superstitions. ” 



as to Ritual. 


155 


She declares that “ the Body of Christ is given, 
taken, and eaten in the supper only after an 
heavenly and spiritual manner,” and that ” the 
mean whereby the Body of Christ is received 
and eaten in the Supper is Faith.” But just as 
plainly she declares that ” sacraments are cer¬ 
tain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, 
and God’s good will toward us, by the which 
He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not 
only quicken but also strengthen and confirm 
our Faith in Him.” Finally, she asserts that 
” the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not 
by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, 
lifted up, or worshipped.” 

Let these quotations suffice to exhibit the 
salient points of the doctrine which this Church 
has gathered from Holy Scripture touching this 
subject. A volume and not a lecture, a life¬ 
time and not an hour, were needed to give you 
the barest outline of the scriptural proof and of 
the historical development. But our concern 
now is with the Ritual in which this doctrine 
shall be embodied, and of the permissibility of 
departure from the appointed Order. 



156 


Discrimination 


I would maintain, first of all, that because 
there is legitimate variety of opinion about the 
nature and efficacy of the Sacrament, that there¬ 
fore there shall be closest conformity to the 
appointed Order ; and secondly, I would plead 
that, due regard being paid to this literal re¬ 
quirement, there shall be kindest judgment and 
self-compelled silence as to the difference of 
opinion. But I hold that the Church should 
give a liberty of Ritual, a defined and regulated 
liberty, corresponding to the freedom of opin¬ 
ion which she has accorded. Why shall the 
arrangements of the Ritual of even this most 
sacred Office, completed in a time of turmoil and 
confusion, when the martyr fires still smoul¬ 
dered, and when anxious fear still trembled lest 
the old enemy should regain the possession from 
which he had been with such difficulty expell¬ 
ed—why shall these be continued of necessity 
without change, for us who “ were free born,” 
who ought to be able to look unappalled at the 
history of Papal usurpation and of scholastic 
dogmatizing, and stand firm in the old paths? 
Especially must the minute directions as to 



as to Ritual, 


157 


posture, which were necessary for the guidance 
of every motion of the Rome-bred priest, to 
keep him out of the rut of the Roman Missal— 
must these continue to be a burden to the mind 
and conscience of the-Priest of to-day, who is 
proudly conscious of his integrity, and intelli¬ 
gent loyalty to the Church’s Standards of doc¬ 
trine ? Must these remain because there is like 
danger now, as in the old time ? Then let them 
be made more explicit, and impossible of misin¬ 
terpretation. Plainly, even in this Office for 
the administration of the highest, holiest act of 
our worship, we need more detail of direction, 
or less. Either take away these petty occasions 
of rubrical stumbling and fault-finding, or make 
them of such rugged prominence that the blind¬ 
est will see them and avoid ; and make it at 
the same time impossible for the ignorant or 
careless tripping to become the defence of the 
deliberate masking of the Church’s fair face by 
the omission or the addition thus justified. 
We need liturgical enrichment, for we need li¬ 
turgical freedom, which is wealth. 

Ritual legislation, rubrical revision, I believe 



158 


Discrimination 


to be the crying need of the Church to-day ; and 
I hail with thankful delight the appointment and 
the assembling of that Commission of learned 
men to whom this matter has by the Church been 
given in charge. May they give us a scheme 
which shall be, first of all, intelligible by all, 
and of no easy misinterpretation ; a scheme 
which shall make plainly lawful varied services 
suited to the differing tastes and capacities of 
our people, and which shall make as plainly 
unlawful the denial by Ritual act, or by a gar¬ 
bling of the words'of worship, of the truth which 
we have as Dogma in Articles, and in Homilies 
as Exhortation. 

Will some man say in reply, that legislation 
is dangerous because thereby our liberty may 
be made less, and the present condition is bet¬ 
ter when each does what seemeth him good ? 
Nay, but conscience often restrains from what 
judgment esteems expedient, because of the 
Church’s law ; Bishops must do by connivance, 
or by supposed inherent right, what they feel 
and know ought to be done, while yet they feel 
and know as well, that under our law their 



as to Ritual. 


159 


right to make alteration in the established 
Order, save on certain specified occasions and 
under certain specified circumstances, is no 
more than that of the humblest Presbyter. 

On the other hand, this faculty of individual 
revision, given by supposed general consent, 
by recognized laxity of the law, may be exer¬ 
cised after this fashion in shortening the form 
of exhortation giving notice of the administra¬ 
tion of the Holy Communion—omit the words 
“ to be by them received in remembrance of 
His meritorious cross and passion,” and thus 
make the Church declare that it is “ the most 
comfortable sacrament of the Body and Blood 
of Christ, . . . whereby alone we obtain 

remission of our sins and are made partakers of 
the kingdom of heaven.” 

I say therefore that we need legislation in 
the interest of liberty—liberty in all directions 
for the truth’s expression—that the consciences 
of good men may have relief, that obstructions 
in the path of the Church’s progress among 
Americans may be removed, and that honest 
misinterpretation concerning non-essentials, or 



i6o 


Discrhn inat ion 


lazy indifference as to rules of mere propriety, 
may no longer give occasion for the justified 
expression of misinterpretation, honest or dis¬ 
honest, ignorant or designing, concerning things 
essential and vital. ■* 

To return for illustration to the Ritual of the 
Lord’s Supper, which as the central act of our 
public worship, as the Liturgy proper, will ever 
determine the characteristics of the mode in 
which other sacred offices will be celebrated, 
is any increase of liberty possible here } How 
shall there not be, in view of the wide compre¬ 
hension by the Article, of theories having in 
common only the acceptance of the fact that 
He who gave His Son to die for our sins hath 
also given Him “to be our spiritual food and 
sustenance in that Holy Sacrament’’ ; the de¬ 
nial of Presence other than spiritual and heav¬ 
enly ; the affirmation that “ Faith is the mean 
whereby the Body of Christ is received and 
eaten,’’ and the repudiation of reservation, 
carrying about, lifting up, and worshipping, as 
in any sense proper accessories to the act of 
Communion ? 



as to Ritual. 


i6i 

Grant that to me the Office in our Prayer 
Book for the administration of the Holy Com¬ 
munion is not only most precious heritage which 
I have received from my fathers, is not only 
hallowed by the recollections of my childhood’s 
awe, and by the tenderest associations of my 
life, but also that it contains for me fullest ex¬ 
pression, inmost perfect proportion, of the truths 
wrapped up in that one peculiar act of Chris¬ 
tian devotion ; grant that therefore I find full¬ 
est benefit and highest spiritual pleasure in the 
administration of the ordinance just as it is 
there set down, in every least particular ; is it 
therefore certain that this must be true of all 
men ? Can I not understand that, from one 
cause or another, difference of taste or of habit 
of mind, a shorter form may be more helpful to 
others ; or at the least, that they may honestly 
long for the liberty for its curtailment on occa-. 
sion ? What parish clergyman has not felt the 
need for such liberty of shortening this Service 
for the relief of the sick and the dying, who, 
earnestly desirous to receive this visible mate¬ 
rial pledge of the Saviour’s love, can yet only 



Discrimination 


162 


with most painful difficulty undergo the fatigue 
of body and mind necessary to intelligent par¬ 
ticipation in the entire Office ? 

Again, why shall the musical taste and skill, 
largely developed in one congregation, be shut 
up to that measure of musical utterance, as is 
perhaps a requirement all beyond the capacity 
of comfortable rendering possessed by another ? 
Why shall not the idea of mystery, which con¬ 
fessedly is Inherent in this act of worship, be 
fully set forth in the Ritual of those to whom 
this thought :s fullest of helpful blessing, pro¬ 
vided only that safeguards protect from the rep¬ 
resentation of any Presence other than spiritual 
and heavenly ? And why shall a Service, whose 
words are often unmeaning, and its construc¬ 
tion unappreciated, be the compulsory perform¬ 
ance of simple-minded ignorance which comes 
to the “breaking of bread,” as possibly the 
earliest disciples came, simply to remember, 
and to be helped to remember, the death that 
was died for them, and to whom the idea of 
mystery being connected with what they do is 
inconceivable ? 



as to Ritual, 


163 


Is it helpful to some to have the sacrificial 
aspect of the Lord's Supper made prominent, 
the showing of the Lord’s death unto the Eter¬ 
nal Father, and the pleading in act of the 
merits of His cross and passion, even as in 
words they make petition, “ for the sake of 
Jesus Christ,” why shall it not be made ex¬ 
plicitly lawful, and in being made lawful the 
” showing forth” be so ordered, that not by 
any possibility ” the dangerous fable and blas¬ 
phemous deceit” of a propitiatory sacrifice 
may find a lodgment in the mind or heart of 
the worshipper ? 

“ No one,” says Prebendary Sadler, ” unless 
he believes that Christ can die over and over 
again, can hold that the sacrificial action of the 
Eucharist is in its essence more than commem¬ 
orative, and no one can hold that it is less. ” ^ 
“No matter how differently they may ex¬ 
press themselves,” he says, immediately before 
the passage above quoted, ” the Ultramontane 
and the ultra - Protestant, when their words 

* Liturgies and Ritual, “The Church and the Age,” 
p. 281. 



164 


Discrimination 


come to be sifted, are here at one.” But if 
the word ” express” in the last sentence may¬ 
be made to include Ritual action as well as 
spoken forms of belief, the statement mani¬ 
festly is not true, for with pain and shame be it 
confessed, in these days of lawless individual¬ 
ism, in which some of us are supposed to re¬ 
joice, there may be found Priests ministering 
under the authority of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church whose expression of sacrificial act can 
with difficulty be distinguished, by an unedu¬ 
cated eye, from that of him who blasphemously 
deceives the people with claim to offer sacrifice, 
which is propitiation for the sins of the living 
and the dead. 

But finally on this point, shall provision be 
made, ought provision to be made,-in our Rit¬ 
ual law for liberty to express our homage to 
the Divine Humanity come after the words of 
Priestly consecration, to the tabernacle of bread 
and wine, because many (shall I say “ many” ?) 
assert that the highest blessing they receive at 
the Holy Communion is in the worship of the 
Present Christ ? The answer is inevitable, that 



as to Ritual. 


165 


there cannot be given liberty for the expression 
of a worship which the Church in her formulary 
of doctrinohas pronounced unlawful. And yet 
ceremonial is to-day a regular use in churches 
of this Communion—ceremonial which means 
this if it means anything, but which Bishops 
are powerless to stop, because it cannot be 
canonically proven that it symbolizes “ errone¬ 
ous or doubtful doctrines. ” 

For example, how can it ever be proven that 
the elements in the Holy Communion have 
been elevated “ in such manner as to expose 
them to the view of the people, as objects 
toward which adoration is to be made'" ? And 
yet, is it not notorious that such elevation as 
has been practiced does to the average beholder 
symbolize a Presence that is worshipped, and 
ought to be worshipped ? 

Again, says the author of the Essay on “ Litur¬ 
gies and Ritual,” from which I already quoted : 
” It is clear that Jerome excuses the lighting of 
lamps in the day time as a pardonable weak¬ 
ness. . . . He mentions at the conclusion of 

his remarks on this matter that the Oriental 



Discrimination 


166 


Church lighted lamps—not however at the 
Consecration, but at the reading of the Gospels, 
at which time common-sense seems to teach 
us that if lighted candles be used symbolically 
at all, they are far more appropriate, for there 
must be a certain order and discrimination in 
symbolical teaching. . . . Again, if we 

look to the Eucharist as a sacrificial commem¬ 
oration, candles seem altogether out of place, 
for they have nothing, even remotely, to do 
with sacrifice.”* 

Shall we, too, not suffer the candles to cast 
their pale light upon this act of our worship, 
excusing their use “as a pardonable weak¬ 
ness” ? But alas ! no matter that as symbol 
they have no fitness for such service, and are 
absolutely insignificant, yet to the average 
American mind they symbolize Romanism, and 
deny the witness for which the Reformers went 
gladly to the stake that they might there light 
that candle which, by the grace of God, we must 
take care shall never be put out. 

So, too, of the use of incense, which, even 
* Liturgies and Ritual, the Church and the Age, p. 308. 



as to Ritual. 


\6y 


according to Roman Catholic decision, has no 
symbolical or dogmatic bearing whatever with 
respect to the Eucharist, for the Mass is in the 
vast majority of cases celebrated without it. 
Yet is it not true that to the mind of our 
countrymen and of our age it is not the symbol 
of acceptable prayer but of Roman worship ? 

In respect to the chalice of mingled water 
and wine, perhaps the same difficulty might 
arise were the act of mingling a part of the 
public Service, and not, as always in the ancient 
time, done in private before the solemnity be¬ 
gins. Surely no one can object that the lover 
of symbolism shall thus recall to mind the 
double stream which flowed from the wounded 
side. 

So, too, in my judgment, about what are 
called the “ sacrificial vestments" ; if it please 
the Priest or his people that he wear them, who 
shall object, for most assuredly we have no law 
to guide, and the people—I mean the people 
who are not of us, but whom we are sent to 
win,—find just as little, and just as much cause 
for wonder in the alb and chasuble, as in the 



Discrim in at ion 


168 


surplice, and possibly a colored stole evokes 
their surprise no more than a black one. 

Am I talking of things indifferent, things 
unworthy of your thought and mine ? Nay, is 
it beneath us to consider even the smallest 
causes of division in our Body, and of slackened 
speed in our advance to occupy the land } 

But do I seem to be advocating the liberty of 
only those with whom I may be supposed most 
nearly to agree ? God forbid that it be so ! 
No, I only assert that Ritual must be ex¬ 
pression of Doctrine, that the limits of the one 
determine those of the other, only these, but 
certainly these. I believe that because of the 
lack of sufficient definition these limits are 
overstepped, and the truth receives the hurt. 
And yet I believe that there is abundant room 
for the gratification of every taste, and the 
symbolizing of every phase of the accepted 
doctrine. Timid, it may be morbid, conscience 
is restrained, and the bolder rushes to trans¬ 
gression—it may be of mere Order, it may be 
of Order involving doctrine—and straightway 
there is accusing and excusing. Diocesan au- 



as to Ritual. 


169 


thority is silent because powerless, or if it speaks 
its sense of the radical difference between of¬ 
fences, sincere conviction sometimes, and some¬ 
times disingenuous evasion, makes clamor of 
persecution and partisanship. Such our con¬ 
dition : is there not a cause that we seek its 
improvement ? 

But I know that answer will be made to 
much that I have been saying, somewhat as 
follows : The people must be educated, the 
Prayer Book must be their educator, and their 
ignorance must not be suffered to be the gauge 
of th.e Forms of devotion we offer them. 

True, that the Prayer Book is a mighty edu¬ 
cator ; true, that as a missionary it has done 
great work among the poorest and the most 
illiterate, and yet equally true it is that only 
by the application of the Rubric of common- 
sense has its educating influence ever been 
brought to bear. 

But in regard to those points to which I 
have made special reference — namely, the 
different aspects of the Holy Communion, the 
people can be but very slowly lifted up to the 



Discrimination 


170 


conceptions which are set forth, often only by 
suggestion, in the Liturgy ; lifted up from the 
idea of mere sympathetic remembrance to the 
realization of spiritual communion. I would 
give liberty for the employment of means to 
help this uplifting, chiefly by the shortening of 
the Service. But, mark you, however far they 
may have attained, the masses of our people 
will never be rid, and they ought never to be 
rid, of their horror of Rome and its enslaving 
system. You cannot educate them into toler¬ 
ance of the similitude of Roman ritual, and it 
is worse than a mistake—it is a crime—for the 
sake of a blind aesthetic devotion to a symbol¬ 
ism which Rome has degraded, and which only 
by largest explanation can ever be made to do 
honor to the truth, to risk the repelling from 
the Catholic Church, and still more from the 
Catholic truth of the Gospel, men and women 
who can see only Romanism in the genuflexion 
and prostration, the burning candle and the 
smoking censer. 

Shall I be told that like mistake and prepos¬ 
session oppose the introduction of any liturgi- 



as to Ritual. 


171 


cal form, and that ^;he people we must teach 
are equally scandalised by surpliced Choir and 
Priest, by written sermon and cross-capped 
spire ? I answer, a mistake and prepossession 
in regard to all our peculiarities does stand 
in the way, but not of like character or of 
equal strength. The mental inertia and bodily 
sloth of men will always be reasons for unwill¬ 
ingness to take part in a religious worship in¬ 
volving bodily and mental activity, and these 
natural instincts have been cultivated to the 
utmost by the forms, or want of forms, of wor¬ 
ship, in which the larger part of our countrymen 
have been educated. But their love of the 
ease they have been accustomed to enjoy is 
not like their love of the truth of the risen 
Christ in which they have learned to believe ; 
their antipathy to “prayers out of a book’’ is 
not like their hatred of Roman arrogance and 
mortkery, which are to their minds all repre¬ 
sented in the mysterious movements of the 
Priest at his Altar. 

But I believe that the Book of Common 
Prayer, as I have already suggested, is, not- 



172 


Discrimination 


withstanding our lost opportunities and our 
suicidal want of harmony, a very magnet which 
is attracting toward our Communion multitudes 
of that ever-increasing number of educated 
people in our land, and that it is beloved as 
their only teacher by men and women every¬ 
where, to whom the advantages of other instruc¬ 
tion were never given. There is no insuperable 
obstacle in the way of educating the people up 
to this highest form of the public worship of 
God, if it be the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ in heaven. Whom we ask them to 
worship, and there be not a suspicion that 
prayer and praise are to be addressed to One 
who is brought near to them by the working of 
ecclesiastical miracle. 

And now, for a very little while, suffer me to 
speak touching the liberty to be accorded in the 
performance of divine worship other than that 
in the administration of the Eucharist. Be¬ 
cause the most precious jewel of our treasure- 
house is therein deposited, our anxiety will be 
most cautious as to any proposed changes in 
the setting, lest thereby the rays of truth from 



as to Ritual, 


173 


some one of the many sides shall not be re¬ 
flected, and the blessing they bring be lost. 
This danger cannot be so great in any other 
case, and our conservative timidity cannot so 
readily find excuse. 

Thank God, the days are past when every 
Clergyman felt bound in good conscience to be¬ 
gin with “ Dearly beloved brethren’' at every 
meeting of Christians, and no matter what the 
emergency, to go straight through to the Apos¬ 
tolic grace before a word of exhortation could 
be spoken, or even a pressing question of Par¬ 
ish business discussed ! And yet the binding 
rules are just as tightly fastened, and even at 
our last General Convention there was refusal 
on the part of one branch of our legislature to 
consent to any loosening. 

Everybody —Bishop, Priest, Deacon, and Lay¬ 
man—knows very well that the Order for Daily 
Morning and Evening Prayer is not said daily 
in many churches, and ought not to be said 
daily, under present circumstances. Everybody 
knows just as well that the appointed routine 
of service is not followed, always ** before all 



74 


Discrimination 


sermons and lectures/' and that it ought not 
to be. And yet there is the law upon the 
statute-book, a brutum fiihneny serving no pur¬ 
pose but to bring into disrepute the Vulcan 
who forged it, and the Jupiter by whose hand 
it was hurled. No, I mistake ; it serves other 
purpose as well : it is a burden to the con¬ 
science of some good men, under which they 
stagger in their going to and fro with the mes¬ 
sage of salvation ; and, worse still, in being the 
demand for an impracticable conformity, it is 
the suggestion of an untrammelled license, and 
so of an equalization of all offences against its 
terms. We need clearly settled liberty in the 
non-essentials of our worship, for the very pro¬ 
tection of that which is most sacred and most 
precious. 

Now, granting that the Church’s doctrine is 
safely guarded in her Sacramental Offices, as to 
which liberty of use must be granted with 
greater caution, why shall the ordained Presby¬ 
ter of this Church, the man who has passed the 
ordeal of entrance, and has sworn the oaths of 
faithful ministration of doctrine and discipline 




as to Ritual, 


175 


and worship—why shall he not be trusted with 
a discretion as to the doings at the ordinary 
assemblings of his people for prayer and praise ; 
and still more, when he goes as Missionary to 
minister to those to whom our ancient forms of 
devotion are new and strange ; who, it may be, 
never saw a Prayer Book, and seeing it could 
not read nor understand it? We cannot but 
assume that he will love best to worship in the 
appointed Order, and that like disposition will 
be characteristic of the regularly organized Con¬ 
gregation of the Church. We must assume 
also that the Minister will not run counter to 
the wishes of his people in this matter. Now, 
grant that the law shall suffer no departure 
from the prescribed form at Services on the 
Lord’s Day in places duly set apart for the 
celebration of Divine Service, yet why shall not 
the Minister be given explicit discretion to do 
what he finds most expedient on other and ex¬ 
traordinary occasions ? I will go so far as to 
ask, what result other than good can come from 
the social informal meeting of Churchmen for 
prayer and praise, under the presidency and 



176 


Discrimination 


direction of the educated ordained servant of 
the Church, even though no official robe shall 
distinguish the Elder from his brethren, and the 
words which are spoken to the All-hearing 
Father are but the crude, spontaneous utterance 
which tries to tell the thoughts and desires of 
the heart ? You answer that the disgraceful 
scenes witnessed at such gatherings are suf¬ 
ficient, more than sufficient, reason for our 
refusal to permit other than liturgical worship 
on any occasion, and ought to be rebuke of the 
suggestion of its allowance. And I rejoin that 
perhaps the Church's failure to direct and con¬ 
trol these natural manifestations of the social 
religious feeling, which must be ancient, prim¬ 
itive, Apostolic, because they are natural, may 
be explanation of their degradation, because 
suffered to fall into the hands of incompetency ; 
as it may also be one explanation of how the 
Church came to lose the privilege of being the 
religious educator of the masses. Further, I 
must add that in many Congregations of this 
Church throughout the land, which have been 
distinguished for largest possession of mission- 



as to Ritual. 


77 


ary zeal and activity, this agency has been em¬ 
ployed with mighty effect by the Minister, de¬ 
spite the prohibitions of the Canon. 

On the other hand, if there be, as undoubt¬ 
edly there are, a large number of men and 
women in the Church, equally earnest in their 
devotion to their Lord, who are best pleased 
and most helped to worship God with elaborate 
ceremonial ; who would have the Choir and 
Clergy approach the sacred place in solemn 
procession, marching under the standard of the 
uplifted cross, and singing, as they march, the 
song of exultant victorious hope ; who love 
best that prayers be sung in restful monotone, 
and that the shouted " Amens” speed their 
flight ta the throne—why shall they be forbid¬ 
den thus to offer the sacrifice of their lips ? 

But further, and most important of all, I ask, 
why shall the worshipper at the Prayer-meet¬ 
ing, rather than the worshipper at the Choral 
Service, be denounced as '' no-churchman," or 
vice versa, when of the plain letter of our law 
each Service is as palpable violation as the 
other ? Herein, as it seems to me, is one larg- 



178 


Discrimination 


est evil of our present condition, that Church- 
manship is being measured by a rule which has 
no possible application, and that ignorance or 
inconsiderateness is busy imputing disloyalty 
because of mere difference of interpretation, or 
of taste, or of judged expediency. I would 
that in every one of our great cities there might 
be a Church wherein the Service should be ren¬ 
dered with all the adjuncts of ritual beauty and 
glory, and yet wherein the keenest scrutiny of 
partisan anxiety could discover no feature of any 
system save purest “ Evangelicalism,'* that so 
the mind of all our people might be disabused 
of the impression that Choral music is the 
necessary vehicle of one particular phase of 
Church doctrine, and that the churchmanship 
of a Minister is to be determined by the pro¬ 
portion in which singing and reading are 
mingled in his Service. 

And so I would that in every city some of 
the men who are recognized as “ extreme” 
in their churchmanship would inaugurate the 
social, informal Prayer-meeting, as one agency 
of their manifold activity, that the false union 




as to Ritual. 


179 


between a form of prayer and a system of doc¬ 
trine might be proven arbitrary and unreal; for 
so I believe one large occasion for stumbling, 
one mighty provocative to harsh judgment and 
evil speaking, were taken away. 

Of course I know very well that this has 
been done long ago in the Church of England, 
and that their disagreements in regard to Rit¬ 
ual are still fiercer than ours. Perhaps, I ven¬ 
ture to say, the connection between Church 
and State enters there as controlling factor to 
disturb the solution of the problem, which is 
possible to us, as certainly the extreme results 
of their disagreement, which will now intensify 
its bitterness and make less possible its heal¬ 
ing, can never be seen in America. But, mark 
you, those results are from alleged violations 
of the integrity of the Church’s truth, and not 
of mere Order. 

I know, too, that answer will be made to 
my words, that the tendency of such allowed 
liberty is dangerous. The lover of ritual- 
observance will fear that people permitted 
ever to worship without its restraints will at 



i8o 


Discrimination 


last find them irksome at all times. And he 
who believes in only simplest form will dread 
lest Choral Service lead directly and inevitably 
to eucharistic adoration. Ah, friends! the 
argument from tendency, the argument from 
our fears, will put effectual stop to all progress, 
and be prohibition of all liberty. The tend¬ 
ency of a republic, the political philosophers 
tell us, and historyseems to prove it, is toward* 
mob rule and communism ; and yet that tend¬ 
ency we have withstood for a century, and the 
outlook is fairer than ever before in man’s po¬ 
litical history for centuries more of well-regu¬ 
lated liberty, without the presence of a stand¬ 
ing army or the accumulation of a centralized 
power. 

The tendency of Low-Churchmen, we have 
been hearing all our lifetime, is toward Geneva, 
and that of their High-Church neighbors toward 
Rome ; and yet they dwell together now more 
closely than perhaps ever before, and neither 
Calvin’s seat nor Leo’s is crowded with the 
tendency-driven exiles. Certainly tendencies 
exist in every organism, toward one point or 



to Ritual, 


i8i 


another of development, but not always so 
irresistible as to make proper that freedom 
be destroyed lest they be suffered to become 
operative, the freedom which is necessary that 
the organism may accomplish its proper func¬ 
tions, and be a joy and not a sorrow to itself. 

But, further: natural tendency, restrained 
unlawfully, in the judgment of him who feels 
the repression, is thereby quickened into more 
eager pursuit of its extreme result. If I am 
ever being taunted with the reproach that I be¬ 
long to Geneva or to Rome, it will be but nat¬ 
ural for me to constantly make nearer approach 
to my asserted final resting-place. 

Therefore I urge that while our liberty con¬ 
tinues undefined, we shall use nicest discrimi¬ 
nation in forming our judgments and in stating 
them. For the man who as steward gives to 
the hungry household a stone instead of the 
bread the Great Householder has provided, and 
by disingenuous artifice persuades its accept¬ 
ance, for his actions we can make no excuse, 
save only that charity shall strive to hope “ all 
things” of possible explanation, and to believe 




Discrim inat ion 


182 


all things” of possible ignorance, rather than 
believe that consciously he is violating his 
vow, ” to instruct the people committed to his 
charge, out of the Scriptures, and to teach 
nothing as necessary to eternal salvation, but 
what he is persuaded may thereby be concluded 
and proved.” To ritual act which teaches the 
unlearned, however it may be explained to the¬ 
ologians, that the Sacrament is a sacrifice pro¬ 
pitiatory for the sins of the living and the 
dead, and that men must adore Christ present 
on the Altar under the form of bread and wine, 
we can, as loyal Churchmen, give nor counte¬ 
nance nor consent ; and to the omission of 
word or deed, which shall put partisan inter¬ 
pretation upon the Church’s Offices, which are 
the Articles of our concord, we can give only 
distinctest disapprobation. 

But in reference to the multitude of varia¬ 
tions in the conduct of our public worship, not 
possibly, or certainly not plainly, involving de¬ 
nial or obscuring of vital truth, variations in 
general wholly dependent upon the taste and 
habits of the worshippers, let us learn to be 









as to Ritual. 


83 


tolerant and silent if we cannot learn to even 
courteously conform to the innocent, though to 
us novel customs of those whose worship we 
have joined. 

. The time will come when things now by 
many esteemed unwarrantable shall be ex¬ 
plicitly authorized, and so terms of reproach 
now often spoken will have their occasion taken 
away. Churchmanship will be shown some 
day to have no connection with, or proper 
measure in, questions of insignificant cere¬ 
mony. Things new and old we will be suffered 
to bring out of the ritual treasure, equally val¬ 
uable whether new or old, if they are efficient 
to excite and to express the true worship of 
the Father for the men of our time ; and 
equally worthless, whether new or old, if unfit¬ 
ted for profitable use by our countrymen. 

Till then we must be governed as to these 
matters by an enlightened Church opinion ; let 
us use wise discrimination in its formation. 
Let us always remember that our worship is 
first to proclaim what is true, decreed to be 
true by the authority to which we owe and 



Discrim ination 


184 

have professed subjection ; it is to be the com¬ 
mon expression of the common belief; and 
then, that for it there is due and prescribed 
Order, to be interpreted by common-sense. 
Therefore, there will be an analogy to which 
our judgments must conform in estimating the 
enormity of departures from that rule. I do 
plead earnestly that this analogy receive due 
consideration, for by its disregard the weight 
of our judgment with those whom'we wish to 
influence is made nil. 

To place on the same level, for example, the 
mere ornamentation which a florid taste enjoys, 
and the prostration or other posture which un¬ 
gracefully announces the supernatural Pres¬ 
ence to be worshipped ; to seem to look upon 
the Choral singing of the Service as part and 
parcel of a system whose corner-stone is at the 
seven-hilled city ; to lazily consent that the 
refusal to pronounce the Church’s declaration 
of new life and new hope to the waiting heart 
of the mother whose child has been baptized, 
is only on a par with the failure to read all of 
the long exhortation each time the Holy Com- 



as to Ritual, 


185 


I munion is administered ; this is to destroy the 
value of our judgment with those who seek it, 
and to drive the inquirer to inconsiderate ac¬ 
ceptance of all as alike good, because we have 
taken away the distinction, by our assertion 
that they are alike evil. 

I believe, after some opportunity for ex¬ 
amination of the question, which opportunity 
I have tried to improve, that perhaps a 
majority, certainly a large proportion of the 
regular attendants upon the services of the few 
ultra-ritualistic Churches in this country, are 
quite indifferent to the distinguishing charac¬ 
teristics of the doctrine therein taught. Some 
of these persons attend a Church of this kind 
because it is free, and a larger number because 
of the hearty Congregational Choral worship 
which they enjoy. They love the sugar-coat¬ 
ing, and take the drug it disguises, in many 
cases without any appreciable effect. Remon¬ 
strance of old friends against their adherence 
to the party they have joined is often met in 
the way I have just now indicated. The mode 
of Service they find a comfort and a blessing. 



Discrimination 


186 

and the other peculiarities cannot be evil, if, as 
decided by the judgment of the remonstrant, 
they are part and parcel of the same system, 
and no more evil than the Service they love. 

But as my last word, I entreat that discrim¬ 
ination may be our companion when we come 
to deal on this subject with the newly convinced 
hearer who would confess his belief. He has 
learned to accept Jesus as the Son of God ; he 
would call upon Him in Whom he has be¬ 
lieved ; he would join the Apostles’ fellowship, 
that he may learn .more of their doctrine ; he 
would be privileged partaker of their “ breaking 
of bread and prayers.” About him are men 
whom he sees to be equally active in the work 
of their Master, equally influenced by ” the 
same Spirit,” but among them there are wide 
“differences of administration” concerning 
these things. He comes to ask where and 
with whom he may have fellowship in the 
breaking of bread and prayers : what answer 
shall we give ? Shall I fill his mind with par¬ 
tisan theories, and his heart with suspicion of 
my brother who calls upon the Lord with other 



as to Ritual, 


187 


tones than mine, or who breaks the bread, as 
it seems to me, with unbecoming irreverence 
and familiarity ? Shall I bid him beware the 
Church wherein the voices of white-robed boys 
swell the pealing anthem, or point out the 
“ unchurchliness’' of the irregular performances 
in the Lecture-room on the Wednesday even¬ 
ing ? God help us to be wise and charitable, 
that we plant not the seeds of ecclesiastical hate ! 

We will teach the young disciple what we 
ourselves believe to be “ the truth as it is in 
Jesus”—yes, what the Scripture plainly asserts, 
or what the Church has set forth ; that as we 
understand it, we must teach ; but for the rest, 
these matters of taste, these adiaphora of 
which I have been talking, whose discussion is 
yet so fierce that in its din the Gospel message 
is sometimes caused to be inaudible, God help 
us to be charitable and discriminating, and to 
teach that though Ritual may and often does 
set forth another Gospel which we must avoid, 
yet that the believer in Jesus may worship 
Him, with equal sincerity and equal truth, in 
many different modes. 





LECTURE IV. 

Discrimination as to Recreation and 
Amusement. 



J. ". '-- y ' y^-y-i"- ' 'S 

• ^ . ■ '. * 

. - ... 


#.-••' 


'i'-i- 


i> - 










LECTURE IV. 


DISCRIMINATION AS TO RECREATION AND 
AMUSEMENT. 

“ Who gave himself for us that He might redeem us 
from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people 
zealous of good works.”— Titus ii : 14. 

T. PAUL writes to the Overseer of the 



^ Church in Crete, that the effect of believ¬ 
ing with the heart and confessing with the 
mouth must be the sanctification of the believ¬ 
ing confessor. He says that the indwelling 
Spirit of Jesus Christ will be visibly manifested 
in a conferred peculiarity, consisting in separa¬ 
tion from iniquity and zealous endeavor after 
good works. Possibly the changed value of 
the word “ peculiar” has given occasion for mis¬ 
understanding of his demand, and for an often 
absurd effort to meet it. When here written 
as the full equivalent of the Apostle's expres¬ 
sion, the word signified “over and above,” 


192 


Discrimination 


“ occupying position separate and peculiar, like 
oviQ speculiu7n or special treasure.” * It had 
not then acquired its new but natural meaning 
of ” singular and unlike anything else,” and the 
English Christian of King James’ day was as 
little liable, as the Cretan to whom the original 
letter came, to be deceived into supposing that 
singularity of costume or of speech was neces¬ 
sary part of the peculiarity which is made up 
of separation from sin and zeal for well-doing. 

It seems to me that nowhere has this error 
been so widely prevalent, and nowhere has the 
misconception lived so long, as in the sphere 
of recreation or amusement, and the words of 
the great Teacher of the Gentiles furnish fullest 
text of the thoughts about these matters that I 
would present. 

I said in my first Lecture that my reason for 
desiring thus to apply the principle of necessary 
discrimination in this department is that I be¬ 
lieve we are, in reference to what are called 
‘‘popular amusements,” standing on ground 
that is wholly untenable. And I believe that 


* Fairbairn, “ Com.” in loc. 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 193 


therefore naturally we are unable to persuade 
men to come and stand with us, and so as re¬ 
sult, because no refuge is offered to which they > 
can consent to repair, they dwell without in 
unprotected freedom and in dangerous un¬ 
restraint. Confessedly the condition of the 
Christian Church, using the word Church in its 
largest possible application, is to-day lament¬ 
able in this respect. Christian people of every 
name, whether educated under influences of 
Puritan severity or of Catholic liberality, the 
descendants of the adherents of Wesley’s 
method, and I almost dare to say, even in this 
community, of George Fox’s complicated sim¬ 
plicity, are alike with one accord the indiscrim¬ 
inate patrons of the play-house and the ball¬ 
room ; and the exceptions to this rule, to be 
found in any Denomination of Christians, are 
greeted with stare of surprise at their pecu¬ 
liarity, like that which once opened its wide 
eyes at the apparition of the long straight coat 
and the broad-brimmed hat ; and, in the judg¬ 
ment of the young beholder, their refusal to 
conform to.the custom of the day, to the hab- 





194 


Discrimmation 


its of his fashionable society, whatever be its 
grade, is just as unreasonable and its exhibition 
as absurd as was the refusal of those old-time 
worthies to be conformed to the world in the 
garb of their bodies or of their thoughts. Of 
course I know very well that in every com¬ 
munity and in every Denomination of Christian 
people there are numerous exceptions to this 
rule, which is yet increasingly general, but they 
usually belong to the generation rapidly pass¬ 
ing away, and they look with amazed and scorn¬ 
ful impotence at the rushing tide which they 
cannot stop, which is sweeping away all the 
traditions of the past. If the children of their 
families be kept during childhood within the 
straitest bounds of the old-time severity, they 
can but grieve to recognize that only this com¬ 
pulsion is the efficient restraint, and that in the 
heart of son and daughter there is evidently the 
complaining sense of wrong, that in their life 
there is none of the gayety and joy which make 
glad the life of their companions. And, child¬ 
hood passed, the weight of parental authority 
removed, there is but too often the bound of 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 195 


the released spring to the utmost limit of pos¬ 
sible departure, and the boyhood of enforced 
abstinence becomes in a day, the young mait- 
hood of prodigal pleasure. I do not know that 
in this respect our age is peculiar and without 
predecessor ; perhaps it has always been so in 
the history of mankind ; perhaps the swing of 
the pendulum must ever be the fullest illustra¬ 
tion of the development of our race ; perhaps 
in accordance with that principle we in America 
are but passing through the period of the Res¬ 
toration as following and reacting from that of 
the Commonwealth, in that the accumulation 
of wealth, the development of luxury, now 
make for us a royal leisure which must be filled 
with the new delights which were unknown in 
the early days of our country’s settlement, and 
impossible to the uncultivated simplicity of the 
pioneer period. 

I think that it may be both interesting and 
profitable to consider for a little while the 
causes of this our present condition in this 
regard, for in discovering the causes of the 
disease we may learn something of the remedy 



196 


Discrimination 


to be administered with best hope of heal¬ 
ing. 

I note firsts then, that in the position as¬ 
sumed, touching this matter of recreation and 
amusement, by the phase of Christianity de¬ 
scribed as “ Puritan,” which was as we know 
the peculiar form of religion first established 
in that large part of our country which has been 
perhaps most influential in giving moral and 
social and religious complexion to the whole 
land, there was an almost ignoring of the need 
for amusement innate in human nature. Let 
us remember that this religion of the Indepen¬ 
dents was the stern protest of men of faith in 
unseen realities, against the degradation of the 
Church of Christ, into a principality appended 
to an earthly kingdom, into a mere Department 
of State. It was their protest against the 
spiritual worship of God being made an unreal 
ritual-drill ; their protest against the religion 
of Jesus being a solace for immoral life, pro¬ 
vided in miracles wrought by impure hands ; 
their protest against the enforced acceptance of 
a creed, a worship, a ritual, not plainly revealed 



as to Recreation and Amusement. igy 

of God ; above all, it was their protest against 
a tyrant whose shame was upheld by a theory 
of divine right, which theory was part of the 
enforced creed. 

Mark you, I would not be considered the 
defender of the Puritans. I can see, as I 
think, perhaps as much of carnal-minded craft 
in the leader who beheaded Charles as of 
weak-minded sensuality in his royal victim. 
But now I would note how natural it is that 
in a phase of Christianity thus developed 
there should be utter disregard of the neces¬ 
sity to provide for this want of human na¬ 
ture, in whose satisfaction there is such large 
opportunity for sin. It was perhaps itself the 
parent of the Revolution, but in its develop¬ 
ment became the child of that it had begotten. 
The character of Christian is identified with 
that of patriot ; opposition to the King of 
England and to the Prince of Evil are one 
and the same thing, and the badge of the one 
enmity must be as arbitrary and as manifest as 
that of the other. Recreation ! What is needed 
more than the Sermon of some ranting enthu- 



198 


Discrimination 


siast ? Amusement ? There is nor time nor 
place for such ; for was it not the very occupa¬ 
tion of the enemy of the Lord’s people, and 
does not the Scripture say—that very Scripture 
whose every word is of divine inspiration, and 
hence of universal and eternal application — 
“ Is any merry, let him sing psalms” ? And 
the stern logic which, in its outworking of 
dogmatic system, does not shrink from the 
assertion of the eternal damnation of new-born 
infants, as blindly and mercilessly would ig¬ 
nore the nature of the race which Jesus came 
to redeem, the nature which the Father gave ; 
would uproot desires and faculties which He 
did implant, because their gratification and de¬ 
velopment, they have determined, cannot be 
without sin. The result we behold in each de¬ 
partment the same : the^soul, which is conscious 
of the Divine Paternity, revolting against the 
ascription of merciless cruelty to the Father, 
and the assertion of the consequent necessity 
for divine sacrifice ; and, longing for a com¬ 
plete human manifestation of God’s father¬ 
hood, will have Jesus to be only Son of man. 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 199 


And so as to dogma, Unitarianism is the off¬ 
spring of Puritanisi?!. And the nature which 
believes itself God-given, and therefore that 
for all its parts there must be possible develop¬ 
ment and satisfaction without sin, and agree¬ 
ably to the Father’s will, it tears in pieces 
these decrees against amusement which Puritan 
Apostles have given it to keep, and all distinc¬ 
tion between the Church and the World in this 
respect is taken away ; and Puritanism begets 
Lawlessness. 

So also in the inception of the great Meth¬ 
odist movement in America, there was a per¬ 
haps natural unmindfulness of the fact that 
man is not a purely spiritual being, and that 
the whole man is to be redeemed, and that by 
the Spirit of Christ, his whole life is to be 
purified, and not a part of that life destroyed. 
Perhaps if we take into consideration the fact 
that Wesley never designed to build a Church, 
but only to constitute a Society for the pursuit 
of holiness within the bounds of the Ancient 
Church whereof he was Minister, we may feel 
less surprised that his wisdom made no provision 



200 


Discrhnination 


in this regard. But as the great work went on 
—the work of preaching the Gospel to men who, 
though Christians, had never heard it ; the 
work of quickening by the Word the new life 
into holiness—in this great spiritual revolution 
there was naturally the same peculiar manifes¬ 
tation as in that wherein the weapons of a so- 
called spiritual warfare were carnal. The 
peculiar dress proclaimed the regenerate, the 
tone of voice revealed the tone of mind, and 
distinctions just as arbitrary in the matter of 
social merry-making and popular amusement 
were made to separate between the people who 
would serve God by method” • and those 
who saw no visions and dreamed no dreams ; 
those to whom the ecstasy of joyful deliverance 
in the moment when the crucified Saviour was 
revealed, was not a tangible experience to be 
located in time and place and circumstance. 
Let us remark here that in those days and in 
those circumstances such distinctions were per¬ 
haps natural, and certainly that such peculiarity 
of life was possible of maintenance. The very 
idiosyncrasies of their conduct were a pleasing 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 201 


excitement in their display ; the Class-meeting 
and the Love-feast were spiritual merry-makings 
where tragic depiction of wrestling combat with 
the Evil One gave satisfaction to the dramatic 
instinct of speaker and hearer, and where pov¬ 
erty and ignorance found their social exchange. 
To-day, at the great centres of population, in 
the cities where wealth and consequent culture 
and refinement are gathered, you shall look in 
vain for aught more than nominal continuance 
of these their ancient peculiarities of method : 
even as they now worship in houses of archi¬ 
tectural splendor, even as the wisest of their 
leaders are grown chary of the employment of 
the mourner’s bench, even as their preaching is 
no longer the unchanging cry to “ flee from 
the wrath to come,” even as the system of 
itinerancy is so modified that their pastorships 
are as ” settled ” as ours, and many are asking 
for Diocesan Ej^iscopacy. Just so their merely 
arbitrary distinctions as to popular and social 
amusements are broken down, and the disciples 
of Wesley are not now more particular in this 
regard than other Christians. 




202 


Discrimination 


I have spoken of these movements, because 
in them I find the origin in chief of the arbi¬ 
trary distinctions largely confined to American 
Christians ; because we of one school in the 
old historic Church have been most largely in¬ 
fluenced by their traditions, and because with 
us, as with them, these arbitrary distinctions 
remain enshrined in the loving memory of men 
and women of the generation passing away, 
and yet have no power with those who come 
after us, and, as 1 believe, are most fruitful 
source of the lawlessness over which we grieve. 

As I have said, I can understand, it seems 
to me, that such badges of loyalty were nat¬ 
ural, were perhaps wise, in the day, and in the 
furious struggle of the day, of their devising. 
But if the danger to the kingdom and cause of 
Christ be as great or greater to-day, still so has 
changed the conviction of men as to its charac¬ 
ter that they will not wear a mere cockade of 
loyalty to testify their devotion to the king’s 
throne. They are not willing to be shut up 
within imaginary lines of demarkation, by the 
authority of their leaders, when they can them- 



as to Recreation and Amusement, 203 


selves see that other territory, around which no 
line of prohibition is drawn, is to the full as 
dangerous as that from which they are forbid¬ 
den. More than this, and most important of all, 
the very unreality of the distinction made serves 
but to destroy the value of their teacher’s wis¬ 
dom, and to justify disregard of all that he 
ordains, even in cases where a doubtful con¬ 
science adds its timid suggestion to the 
Church’s expressed warning, or rather to the 
traditional opinion of the Christian world. 

I say, “rather to the traditional opinion of 
the Christian world’’ ; for speaking as I am 
especially with reference to the dangers and 
duties of our own Church, I must here again 
express my satisfaction that on the statute- 
book of the Church are found no enactments 
against particular transgressions, other than 
those plainly laid down in Holy Scripture. I 
believe that her wisdom is shown here in fol¬ 
lowing the example of that Holy Scripture, in 
the inculcation of principles rather than of pre¬ 
cepts, in the effort to develop self-determin¬ 
ing manhood rather than to essay the continu- 



204 


Discrimination 


ance of a childhood to be directed and guided 
at its every step. But more of this by and 
by. Now I would emphasize the arbitrariness 
of these moral differences made by Christian 
people, and the absurdity—yes, absurdity—of 
some of them. In retreating from the position 
on this subject once held, the march has been 
unequal at different points of the line, so that 
now the front presented is zigzag and defence¬ 
less. At one point we are come back, to an 
eminence unassailable, plainly pointed out upon 
the chart of battle given us so long ago ; but 
far in front of it, on the right hand or the left, 
are still huddled a handful of fearful men, who 
in honest loyalty to that they believe, cannot 
surrender the place, though low and marshy 
and easy of assault; who cannot see that the 
true line of defence is behind them, even that 
natural boundary whereof the rocky height is 
part. Alas ! the danger is that by and by, 
driven thence by a force they cannot resist, 
they shall in utter demoralization throw away 
their arms and give up the contest. If they 
cannot maintain the point where their fathers 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 205 


stood, tjien is there nothing worthy of defence 
or of struggle : let it all go. 

To drop all figure and speak with perfect 
plainness, I believe that the indiscriminate con¬ 
demnation of one whole class of amusements 
and the indiscriminate approval of another has 
produced the effect, upon the mass of Christian 
people, to destroy the value of all such judg¬ 
ment. Of the class condemned they can find 
particular specimens that are good and helpful, 
as of the class approved they can find speci¬ 
mens that are bad and hurtful, and the distinc¬ 
tion is proven vain, and equally vain all of like 
character. ’ 

For example, we no longer hear outcry made 
against the reading of fictitious literature, and 
on the Library-table of almost every Christian 
home in this city will be found the latest prod¬ 
ucts of our teeming press, any one of which 
had been perhaps an “ unclean thing” in the 
judgment of the earnest Christian an hundred 
years ago, which he must ” touch not” lest he* 
be defiled. To-day a wise Christian father or 
mother will be careful that the purity of son or 



2 o6 


Discrimination 


daughter be not sullied by the perusal of pages 
which can bring only defilement with guilty 
knowledge ; but recognizing fully that much, 
perhaps even the larger part, of contemporary 
fictitious literature is an unclean thing, not to 
be touched or tasted or handled save with cer¬ 
tain damage, yet to secure immunity from 
this hurt we do not in puritanic wrath burn all 
such writings in our social market-place. On 
the contrary, the young man ahd maiden are 
bidden and urged to study the masterpieces of 
the literary artists of the old time, and to find 
recreation and delight in the poem, the novel, 
the drama of to-day ; for not only are they es¬ 
teemed to be legitimate sources of purest men¬ 
tal recreation, but as works of art they stimulate 
and cultivate in us the God-given appreciation 
of the beautiful. 

More than this ; because we have learned 
that in the mirror held up to nature, igno¬ 
rance and immaturity can best learn the lessons 
'that life in its multiform variety is fitted to 
impart; because we have learned also that the 
art of fictitious portraiture is a blessing to 



as to Recreation and Ainnsenient. 207 


men ; and because in its faithful rendering of 
the good and the evil, in their natural com¬ 
mingling, is its power to give help and to give 
pleasure, we consent that vice must be pic¬ 
tured in the story—vice even sometimes trium¬ 
phant—and that the danger of defilement be¬ 
gins only with the false representation, when 
the results of vicious living are concealed, and 
its joys exaggerated. Discrimination must 
select the true from the false, the impure from 
the clean. Alas ! though we have learned its 
necessary use in this particular department, we 
are sadly derelict in the performance of our 
duty, and perhaps to-day there is no more 
fruitful cause of moral degeneracy than the 
fictitious literature which feeds the minds of 
our boys and girls. 

But, mark, I pray you, that now all Chris¬ 
tians acknowledge that there is pure and health¬ 
ful fictitious literature, both in prose and 
verse ; all acknowledge that there is a proper 
place for it in our Christian society, even ac¬ 
knowledge that it is a mighty power for bless¬ 
ing aird for cursing, so that we seek to employ 



208 


Discrimination 


it for purpose of propagating the truth, re¬ 
ligious, ecclesiastical, or even political, which 
we value most. 

Further, we cheerfully admit that the hear¬ 
ing one Artist interpret what another Artist has 
created is added delight which cannot be for¬ 
bidden oh any true Christian ground ; and so 
Clergy and Laity may go hand in hand to the 
Concert hall, where, without the assistance of 
costume and scenery, the Prima Donna shall 
sing for us the strains which have floated in 
upon the rapt soul of the musician, or the Tra¬ 
gedian without his buskin shall make us un¬ 
derstand what the seer has beheld of the intri¬ 
cate workings of that mysterious thing, a 
human heart. 

I remember that a great Tragedian, once 
visiting a neighboring city, received request 
from the members of the Young Men’s Chris¬ 
tian Association, that for their benefit and en¬ 
tertainment he would come to their hall and 
give them a Shakespearian reading. I remem¬ 
ber that his answer came back, that it could 
not be proper for them to hear him read, while 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 209 


sitting in a chair, the words which they deemed 
it all unlawful to listen to, if he should speak 
them while dressed to represent the character, 
and standing amid the mimic scene designed to 
heighten the effect, by rendering the illusion 
more complete. I could not help admiring the 
man for his rebuke to the Christian inconsist¬ 
ency which would thus emphasize a distinction 
without a difference. 

Are you wondering, my Christian friends, 
that I can speak such words ? And are you writ¬ 
ing me down in your judgment as the advocate 
of the Theatre ? I know the risk I am running 
of being misunderstood ; I know full well the 
danger to which I am exposing my Christian 
reputation ; but I must speak, for I believe 
that by nothing more than by these unreal, 
arbitrary, often'absurd distinctions, is the 
cause of Christ being hindered in our countr3\ 

The Theatre is to-day, I believe, degraded 
into a very high school of vice ; the dramas 
which are put upon the boards are in general, 
I believe, suggestive pictures of licentious life ; 
the wit is pointed only by its coarseness, the 



210 


Discrmiinatiori 


plot is an intrigue, and its incidents selected 
for the sake of their lewd piquancy ; while 
but too often wit and plot and incident are 
altogether nothing but an opportunity for the 
exhibition of shameless nakedness ; and Chris¬ 
tian people of every name, young and old, rich 
and poor, all alike are its patrons. 

This the fact, the melancholy fact, which 
compels the Christian teacher to seek its ex¬ 
planation, to break down if he may the 
scaffolding of unreal distinctions, builded by 
Christian sentiment, which protects the indis¬ 
criminate patronage, and to seek a remedy in 
urging that we more fully recognize that the 
peculiarity of the disciples of Christ is redemp¬ 
tion from all iniquity, and purification unto 
zeal for good works. 

I say that there is a faculty implanted in our 
nature which demands exercise in the recrea¬ 
tion of its jaded companions ; that amusement 
is as necessary as labor, to the well-being and 
health of body, mind, and spirit ; and I say 
that because this is true, therefore the >exercise 
of this faculty, the satisfying of this hunger. 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 21 


must be possible without sin. Further, I find 
that the representation of nature by art, be 
that art musical, pictorial, literary, or dra¬ 
matic, does offer fullest opportunity for this 
faculty to be developed into healthy activity, 
does offer most satisfying food to this hunger. 
The doll in the nursery, the snow-man on the 
playground, the merry singing of a group of 
boys and girls, the masqueradings and the 
dramas of childhood, equally with the juvenile 
books which are such entrancing joy,—all tes¬ 
tify to the reality of the need I find in men, 
and of the natural satisfaction it seeks. 

The writer’s ready pen is no longer forbid¬ 
den to bring to my child happy companions 
and gleeful sports from an unseen child-world ; 
the Christian is no longer forbidden to laugh 
and weep with the joys and sorrows of the 
creatures born of the genius whose dead body 
the great Abbey enshrines ; nay, I may even 
go, as I have said, to see the Artist tear the 
wrappings off, that I may behold the hidden 
wonders of Art, whereof before I had no con¬ 
ception, if only the helpful accompaniment 



212 


Discrhnination 


that Artist would fain employ, and does employ 
on other occasion, be absent. Is this natural ? 
Grant that vice reigns supreme in the Play¬ 
house ; does it not as really control the Press 
whence issue the works of fiction ? Are actors 
and actresses, in drama and opera, men and 
women of evil life, who should not be counte¬ 
nanced or encouraged ? Is it less encouragement 
to give them our countenance at the Concert or 
the Reading ? Above all, ought we to surren¬ 
der this mighty engine for instruction and de¬ 
light into hands that will use it only to de¬ 
grade ? May there not be, should there not 
be, a discrimination possible, which by its very 
wisdom and reason will commend itself to the 
mind and heart of the great multitude of Chris¬ 
tians who are now utterly unmindful of any 
such obligation, and who go to laugh at the 
coarse obscenities of the comic opera, as they 
go to behold the most splendid realization of 
most splendid poetic conception ? 

One other example I will give of like un¬ 
meaning distinction productive of like abandon¬ 
ment of all distinctions by the people. The 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 213 


rattling dice are heard in many a Christian 
parlor, and the dull routine of backgammon 
whiles away many an evening in homes where 
a card would be looked upon as the very ban¬ 
ner of the Prince of all evil, from which chil¬ 
dren should be bidden to flee, and which the 
fire on the hearth should quickly consume. 
The dominoes afford amusement to the gath¬ 
ered company, with perfect Christian propriety, 
but if the same numbers be printed on card¬ 
board instead of ivory, then the same combi¬ 
nations, which were just now harmless, become 
most dangerous. Substitute letters of the 
alphabet for the traditional characters on the 
cards, and the game becomes innocent which 
before was evil, though the principles of the 
two are identical. And yet a moment’s reflec¬ 
tion would serve to convince us that, as the 
implement of the gambler, the dice-box is as 
frequent and as enticing as the card-table, and 
that in some grades of society, even in America, 
the game of dominoes is the hiost usual occa¬ 
sion of the hopes and fears of the gambler ; and 
that dice and dominoes may be and are as real 




214 


Discrimination 


provocation as cards, of the covetous lust for 
gain, and of the angry despair of loss, which 
blacken and foul the divine image in which he 
was created. So that in this particular in¬ 
stance, not even the argument from natural or 
necessary tendency may be adduced as justifi¬ 
cation of the arbitrary selection ; whereas the 
stigma placed upon the one pastime, while the 
other and the similar escapes our ban, does but 
serve, and serve inevitably, to vacate the power 
of our judgment mall such matters, and to sug¬ 
gest that it is but an unreasoning traditional ob¬ 
jection which forbids the wager upon the result 
of any game, though that finds certain warrant 
in the prohibition of the Master Himself of 
the “ covetousness which is idolatry.” 

These examples may suffice to illustrate the 
position I would maintain, that unreal moral 
distinctions are fruitful cause of the disregard 
of all, even those most real. But I cannot fail 
to mention one other, belonging to wholly 
different category, itself perhaps a result, and 
not a cause, of the indiscriminate conformity 
of Christians to the world’s customs, but just 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 215 


as utterly without foundation as the others, and 
effectual, like them, to continue this moral 
chaos from which it came. I mean the distinc¬ 
tion, which is everywhere recognized, as to the 
different moral duty of Clergy and Laity in this 
respect. I feel confident that a large proportion 
of the Christian men and women to whom I am 
speaking to-night would consider it quite with¬ 
in the limits of their Christian liberty to attend 
the representation of some world-renowned 
drama by an artist of fame as wide. I will take 
for granted, as I can but hope I am justified in 
doing, that but few of my auditors would not 
be careful as to the character of the perform¬ 
ance to which they would lend their presence ; 
yet how amazed and sorrowful would they be 
to see their Clergyman enter to enjoy that 
which they consider perfectly allowed to them¬ 
selves without self-condemnation ! And is not 
.their feeling of surprise and of sorrow wholly 
without excuse, if indeed their own presence 
may not; be questioned ? Is there different 
moral rule laid down in Holy Scripture for 
Clergy and Laity ? Are the Ministers of Christ 



2 I 6 


Discrim mat ion 


aught more than a part of that “ peculiar 
people/’ though they be their leaders and 
guides, all of whom equally, St. Paul writes to 
Titus, Christ would redeem from all iniquity 
and purify unto Himself.^ 

Now be it understood that I, as a public 
religious teacher, may abstain from this or that 
of self-indulgence for manifold reasons of expe¬ 
diency, and with greatest propriety. Indeed I 
think the Minister of Christ worthy of only 
contempt who, whatever he may think of the 
moral tendency of any offered entertainment, 
shall selfishly refuse to abstain from it, if there 
be reasonable probability that by his refusal he 
shall place in the Christian pathway a stone of 
stumbling against whose sharp sides ignorance 
or recklessness may be wounded to death or to 
desertion of the race. But, on the other hand, 
this principle must have its limitations in its 
application to each particular case, lest our 
Christian liberty be placed in the power of 
every morbid conscience in the community ; 
and still more, for .me to abstain from that 
which is in my judgment sinless, on the allowed 



as to Recreation a 7 id Amusement. 217 


ground that it is sinful, is falsehood as real as 
were my assertion by my action, of my belief 
in the sinlessness of what in reality I believe to 
be sinful. 

But more than this, and most important of 
all in the discussion with which we are now en¬ 
gaged, such arbitrary division of the teacher 
from the taught tends surely to lower the stand¬ 
ard of excellence for the disciples’ endeavor, 
and to make him content with lower attain¬ 
ment ; and it tends as well to inculcate the 
falsehood of a vicarious performance of per¬ 
sonal duty, which is so full of danger because 
it is so full of pleasing satisfaction to the human 
heart. 

The Clergy, we all say, must set an example 
to the People. Yes, but example for what—to 
be admired or to be imitated ? Manifestly, 
only the latter, if what is sinful — mark you, 
not merely inexpedient, but sinful—in the Min¬ 
ister is sinless in those to whom he ministers. 
And yet, just as manifestly, such is the theory 
prevalent to-day. The dance may go on, the 
joy be unconfined, now that the Minister is 



2 I 8 


Discrhn uiatioyi 


gone from the wedding-feast ; but the conver¬ 
sation grows more restrained at his approach, 
and youth is silent and reserved, as though in 
the unwelcome presence of a policeman come 
to search for offenders against the law, and to 
secure their punishment, rather than of the 
elder brother come to share their joy, as he 
will come to share their sorrow when the feast¬ 
ing has been changed to mourning. 

I believe that this enforced separation of the 
Clergy from their People in the hours of recre¬ 
ation is a mighty evil ; I believe that it tends 
to prevent that fullest confidence and sympa¬ 
thy which alone can enable them to be fullest 
help to those who need help ; and, more than 
all, that it tends directly to lower the tone of 
social merry-making and public entertainment, 
both in removing the restraint which age and 
wisdom and feeling of responsibility would im¬ 
pose, and in searing the conscience of Christian 
disciple with hot burning recollection that he 
is taking part in that which he himself would 
be ashamed to see his Minister enjoy. 

Certainly, the pastor must go before his 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 219 


flock ; certainly, the teacher must have made 
greater attainment than his pupils ; certainly, 
he who would point the wayfarer to heaven 
must lead the way. More than this : let us be 
sorry for the man who, busy day after day in 
ministering Christ’s pardon to the penitent 
and Christ’s consolation to the sorrowing ; who, 
kneeling often by the bedside of pain, and 
breaking the bread of hope in the chamber of 
despairing fear, is yet ever longing for the glare 
of the ball-room and the play-house — for the 
follies of the society of which he must be a 
part. He has a great work to do, and cannot 
come down ; and yet he must come down as a 
man among men, to be partner in all their life 
in its every manifestation, if he shall do that 
great work. 

“ The way to make indifferent things 
wrong,” says George Macdonald, ” is for good 
people to stop doing them” ; and well will it 
be for the Church when it shall be fully recog¬ 
nized that what is lawful for People is lawful 
for Priest, and that what the Priest may not do 
because it is sinful, his People too must forego. 




220 


Discrimination 


But I can hear already the reproachful ques¬ 
tion, in answer to all that I have been saying, 
“ Shall there not be a line of separation be¬ 
tween the Church and the World ? Shall there 
not be badges of abstinence and of perform¬ 
ance, whereby they may be recognized who 
have named the precious name, and have 
sworn the sacrament of allegiance?” And I 
answer. Yes, a line, but notan imaginary one, 
to be determined only by measured reference 
to fixed points far distant, but aline of division 
deep and wide as between life and death, nat¬ 
ural and necessary, the outworking, individ¬ 
ual and peculiar, of the indwelling Spirit of 
Jesus, to Whom has been surrendered the will. 
No such real difference can distinguish the 
officers from the host, for both classes are alike 
saved, and alike bound, by the same act of 
surrender and confession ; they are distin¬ 
guished but in relative position, and their con¬ 
duct to be differentiated by considerations only 
of expediency and not of absolute morality. 

But shall these matters of Christian conduct 
be left to the determination of the individual 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 221 


Christian disciple, and shall not rather the 
Church, in discharge of her bounden duty “ to 
edify the saints,” lay down rules of conduct 
for men’s guidance ? Shall she not station the 
sentinels of anathema and excommunication 
over against the enticing resorts of pleasure, to 
warn away the infatuated, and to arrest and 
discipline the offender ? 

I answer, search the Holy Book, and see 
that in it there are no rules containing specific 
injunction or prohibition, but that, on the 
contrary, everywhere we read the enunciation 
of great broad principles of conduct and of 
duty, which all rest upon the one supreme mo¬ 
tive of loyalty to the personal Christ, and are 
all made applicable by the promised assistance 
of His Spirit. The delectable mountains of 
holiness are shown to the pilgrim, and toward 
their heights he is bidden to turn his eager 
feet ; but these heights stand forth in vague 
and undefined magnificence, .and the encircling 
hills of little duties and little denials are not 
described ; the aspiration for the summit must 
be guide sufficient for their surmounting. See 



222 


Discrimination 


the great Apostle says : “ Whatsoever things 
are true, whatsoever things are honest, what¬ 
soever things are just, whatsoever things are 
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
things are of good report, . . . think on 

these things. ’ ’ These stand out boldly as goals 
of our endeavor ; yet behind them we can see 
still loftier elevation : “ Charity [which] beareth 
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all 
things, endureth all things.” Still farther dis¬ 
tant, still higher summit, we behold : ” Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and all thy soul, and all thy mind ; and thy 
neighbor as thyself. ” And, lifted above all, 
amid the clouds and darkness which are round 
about Him, we are shown the glowing perfec¬ 
tion to which we must come : ‘ ‘ Be ye therefore 
perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect.” 

And so, on the other hand, we hear of the 
works of the flesh which are the denial of the 
presence of the Spirit, and so the proof that 
though there has been confession of the mouth, 
there has been no belief with the heart in Him 



as to Recreation and Amusement, 223 


Who was raised from the dead. Impurity and 
falsehood, injustice and hate : these are evi¬ 
dence of subjection to the Evil One, whom 
the Christ would destroy. Therefore, against 
them, all of them, in their every possible phase, 
the believer in Jesus will struggle, must 
struggle, because the Spirit who dwelleth in 
him lusteth against the flesh. 

But have you not observed that the Apostles 
and the Lord never specify particular provoca¬ 
tions to sin to be avoided, never lay their 
hands on any particular temptations to trans¬ 
gression, and ciy aloud against them ? And 
yet v.^e know that the world of their day offered 
just as enticing invitation to the Christian as 
the world of our own time, and that society— 
best society as we might call it—was more cor¬ 
rupt, perhaps, than ever before or since. 

At the games in whose wrestling and running 
contests St. Paul finds the illustration of the 
Christian life, which he employs in his letter to 
the Corinthians, he seems to take for granted 
their frequent attendance and participation ; 
and yet, notoriously, every incitement to 



224 


Discrimination 


vicious indulgence was there offered. It seems 
to me, then, that the wisdom of the Church of 
to-day is to follow this example of refusal to 
stigmatize as forbidden, anything other than 
that which is in itself plain violation of the 
moral law to which God bears witness in con¬ 
science and in Scripture. I do not believe that 
St. Paul designed to give complete catalogue 
of all possible works of the flesh when he wrote 
the list for the Galatians ; on the cofitrar}^, I 
believe that the enemy will change his bait to 
suit the changed habit and appetite of the prize 
he would secure. I believe that, of necessity, 
the dangers of our age of luxury and refine¬ 
ment must be wholly different from those which 
environed our forefathers, and hence that there 
will be ever new occasion again and again, as 
the years pass by, that the Church, the ever-, 
living Apostle and Guide, shall by her Ministers 
cry aloud to tell of the new dangers to which 
her children are exposed, and to warn that they 
be avoided. But this very duty involves that 
she see and admit that the old-time dangers 
may be no longer so full of peril ; that because 



as to Recreation and Amusement, 225 


of the changed condition in thought and habit 
of life the old-time distinctions may be no 
longer insisted upon ; and I repeat again, 
that the failure to make this admission must 
weaken if it does not destroy the value of the 
teacher’s judgment with his pupil. 

More than this : I urge that in the performance 
of this duty the modern Church shall imitate the 
Apostolic wisdom and refrain from all legislation 
as to particulars, and that the representatives 
of the Church in their application of principles 
to individual cases shall refrain from indiscrim¬ 
inate condemnation and indiscriminate ap¬ 
proval ; but in ministering “ ghostly counsel 
and advice” shall have fullest regard to differ¬ 
ences of temperament and of development, to 
habits of mind and of body, and that in all 
such ministrations the aim be kept steadily in 
view to develop a self-determining Christian 
manhood, and not to be the director of a child¬ 
hood which shall never end ; and, above all, 
that we fail not to constantly set forth that the 
indwelling of Christ is salvation, and that if 
Christ be in us ” the hope of glory,” He must 



226 


Discrimination 


bring every thought and desire into subjection, 
and that such increasing subjection is the alone 
assurance of the salvation we seek. 

Has not the disposition of Christian people 
and Christian teachers been rather in this par¬ 
ticular to set up a Procrustean bed of iron 
conformity, on which every temperament and 
disposition must be stretched, no matter for 
radical differences of stature ? Have we not 
rather sought to furnish Christian people, in re¬ 
spect to the matter of which I speak, a patent 
medicine equally curative of all disorders, 
equally indicated as remedy by every symp¬ 
tom of disease, and to make the one prescrip¬ 
tion an universal pharmacopeia ? Have we not 
failed to remember that, in the spiritual nature 
as the physical, there are for different individuals 
varying needs and varying dangers, demanding 
varying food and varying medicine ? I can 
take as food, with pleasure and with safety, 
many things which to my friend and compan¬ 
ion, even my closest of kin, may be deadly : 
shall it be otherwise with the spiritual nature ? 
And shall it not be probably true that a pursuit, 



as to Recreation and Amusement, 227 


be it of business or of pleasure, which is harm¬ 
less, or even helpful to me, shall cause lethargy 
and death if persisted in by him ? And then, 
too, may we not expect to meet spiritual dys¬ 
peptics, who are by their very condition made 
to be dietary propagandists, who will insist that 
only that is safe for anybody which they have 
found their morbid powers can comfortably 
manage ? 

But just as certainly, to carry out our 
analogy, there are spiritual poisons, which 
bring death to the new life from Jesus, where¬ 
soever it has been quickened. Let the nature, 
material and visible, be our guide in dealing 
with that which is spiritual and invisible : it is 
the work of the same Creator, and teaches us 
that wise discrimination must decide what is 
healthful for the individual soul ; that the 
Father and Brethren must write “ Poison” in 
large letters upon that which the universal ex¬ 
perience has proven to be hurtful to all ; but 
with reference to all else, that advice shall invite 
the adult to the practice of approved regimen, 
and authority compel its adoption by the child. 



228 


Discrimination 


Further, let us remember that only advice is 
possible for the full-grown man, and that there 
be no failure to recognize maturity and its per¬ 
sonal responsibility when they are come ; and 
further still, that our advice be not made nuga¬ 
tory by being so indiscriminate that he who 
asks it can discover flaw by his own experi¬ 
mental investigation. 

The question then presents itself to the in¬ 
telligent Christian faith of to-day. What shall 
be done to protect the disciples of Jesus from 
the influences^ on every hand which are oppos¬ 
ing the accomplishment of His desire and pur¬ 
pose, to purify them into a peculiar people, re¬ 
deemed from all iniquity, and zealous for good 
works? These influences are so manifold, and 
confessedly, by them, so large a proportion of 
our young men and women are being dwarfed 
in their spiritual stature; for the bonds of 
iniquity are by their means enabled still to re¬ 
strain the growing limbs, and the exercise of 
doing good works is made impossible by the 
very preoccupation of the mind and heart with 
these welcomed visitors. Shall we seek to 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 229 


close the doors against all visitors who are not 
come expressly to help the deliverance from 
sin, the new creation unto holiness ? Shall we 
seek to continue the old plan of denying the 
lawfulness of the natural desires, and of refus¬ 
ing to suffer any answer to be made to their 
calling, because we have decided that calling 
to be only the disobedient outcry of a child 
commanded to be silent ? Shall we seek to 
resurrect a dead Puritanism, or to breathe a 
new life into the Methodist asceticism, which 
is confessedly old and dying, if not dead ? As 
easy it were to compel that all Christians shall 
dwell to-day in the log-hut of the frontiersman, 
in the carpetless cold and comfortless simplicity 
of the early days in America, as to refuse to 
wealthy leisure its dilettante occupation in the 
study of the works of art which its riches can 
buy and its culture enjoy ; or to make men and 
women believe evil the excitement of the social 
assembly where youth and beauty “ chase the 
hours with flying feet. ’ ’ These things were ex¬ 
hibitions of worldliness, essential worldliness, 
to the mind and heart of our ancestors, and are 



230 


Discrini ination 


still, in the judgment of many who hold on to 
the ideas of their grandfathers, whereas they 
are but the gratification of the natural tastes of 
human nature, that human nature everywhere 
and always the same, which found expression 
then in other forms, perhaps just as liable to 
be perverted to sin. 

Nay, Christianity would not, cannot destroy 
human nature, and it were an evil thing to do 
if it could ; but it can and must control it, if 
it be of any value—control it in redeeming it 
from all iniquity, and in purifying it into zeal 
for good works. How, then, may we assist its 
attainment of this control ? I answer, first and 
chief, not by lopping off the outer branches of 
mere doubtful morality, but by cutting down 
the tree whereon they grow, even the merely 
external acceptance of Christ’s religion, the un¬ 
real union with Him. How shall we remedy 
this diseased condition of the Church of to¬ 
day ? I answer. By the intensification of the 
conception of the living Christ, and of union 
with Him in honest self-surrender ; for this and 
this only can effect the separation from all in- 



as to Recreation and Aniusenient, 231 


iquity, and the zealous endeavor after all good 
works. I answer, that it must be done not by 
legislative enactment against particular self- 
indulgence, not by the anathema of repulsion 
hurled by Priestly hands against joyous, light¬ 
hearted youth because it has joined in this 
or that gayety ; surely not by indiscriminate 
condemnation of the traditionally accepted 
“ worldliness,” but by the making more real to 
those over whose departure we are grieving, 
that to be a Christian is to have Jesus Christ 
as the very centre and source of our life. 

Let us seek to teach them^ ever more and 
more plainly, that not orthodoxy, but loyal love, 
is salvation ; that the expression of that loyal 
love may have very varying shape, and that no 
routine of ritual can give assured help to our 
weakness or be guarantee of salvation ; and 
that if the Christ be ours, and we be His, that 
He will teach each one of us what we must do 
and what we must avoid, and that on our loyal 
and willing effort to do His will depends all our 
hope. Yes, that our redemption from all in¬ 
iquity Ls His will, and that we are false to Him, 




232 


Discrimination 


and separate ourselves from Him, whensoever 
we allow ourselves in the omission of what He 
commands us, or the commission of that which 
He by His Spirit, by His Church, by His 
Word, teaches us to be fraught with evil. 

I say further, let us strive to make men re¬ 
alize more and more the dealing, the promised 
dealing of Jesus Christ with the individual be¬ 
liever, that by our murmuring complaint of a 
brother’s behavior he may not be provoked to 
more reckless assertion of his freedom, and ex¬ 
cited to angry dissatisfaction with our self- 
appointed censorship. Let us seek to recog¬ 
nize that possibly our brethren are walking with 
unsoiled robes through places where ours would 
most surely be all bedraggled and made unfit 
for the King’s house. And let us recognize 
that the distinctions we have inherited from 
those who went before us may be, many of 
them, now without value, and cannot be main¬ 
tained, and that the effort to maintain them is 
to drive men away from us as guides whose 
counsel they will not accept. 

We will insist that separation from all sin. 



as to Recreation and Amusement. 233 


j from all that tends directly and inevitably to 
sinful desire and sinful habit, must be the rule 
for all, Clergy and Laity, young and old, rich and 
poor. But we will admit that for different na¬ 
tures there may'be unequal danger in the same 
thing, and we will admit that for all there may 
be safety in some instances of a class generhlly 
dangerous, even as there is defilement in the 
use of many particular specimens of a class in 
general considered safe. 

We v/ill make distinctions, honest and real, 
and not fanciful, arbitrary, and often absurd. 
So we will seek to gain the confidence of the 
men of to-day, that by our counsel they may 
learn the obligation, the necessity to make such 
distinctions for themselves, and in the matter 
of amusement, as of all else in their life, to 
seek the honor of Christ. 

Finally, let me say that leading men thus 
slowly and gradually, by steps which they can 
understand, and whose need they can appre¬ 
ciate, we may hope to bring them in the devel¬ 
opment of their highest nature to find their 
recreation in spiritual exercise, and to be 



234 


Recreation and Amuse^nent, 


more and more free from the longing for mere 
amusement, even though it be sinless. Yes, 
“ earthly pleasures fade away when Jesus is re¬ 
vealed” ; but the full revelation of the ” open¬ 
ing day,” which alone can conceal the stars, 
cannot be accomplished or be hastened by the 
denial of the reality of the starlight ; and cer¬ 
tainly it cannot be effected by the foolish fail¬ 
ure to distinguish between the glorious sheen 
of those splendid fires and the feeble glimmer¬ 
ing of a sputtering candle, though it be true 
that both alike are extinguished by the sun¬ 
shine. 





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rrn irtnl 

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